Bellissima
November 12, 2023
In Luchino Visconti’s classic look at post-war Italian cinema through a comedic lens, an extremely pushy stage mother enters her plain and talentless little girl in a prettiest-child-in-Rome contest. New 4k restoration.
Individual Tickets: Select showtime to purchase
Passes: $125 | $100 SIFF Members - Access to all Cinema Italian Style screenings and the Opening Night party
SIFF year-round passes are not valid for this screening. Vouchers are accepted.
Maddalena Cecconi (the lumnious Anna Magnani), married to the master builder Spartaco, lives in the working-class district of Prenestino. The couple has just one child, their eight-year-old daughter Maria: the little girl has a pleasant-looking but hardly beautiful face, even though she is bellissima in the eyes of her mother, who dreams of a bright future for her. When the Stella Film company stages a competition in Rome to choose a young girl to play a role in a new movie, Maddalena decides, against the wishes of her husband, to have her daughter enter it, spending time and money in an attempt to get her the part. After meeting a young con man who extracts more money out of her, and after seeing her daughter humiliated at the screen test, Maddalena goes home in tears. When the director, having realized the little girl’s acting ability, sends someone to offer her a lucrative contract, the woman, now disillusioned, drives him away and is reconciled with her husband. Though this film is often overlooked in Visconti’s canon, it stands as a great example of the combination of the neorealism he is known for and the near-operatic melodrama of his later titles—making this underrated classic unforgettable.
RESTORATION CURATED BY: Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia-Cineteca Nazionale in collaborazione con Compass Film
- Director: Luchino Visconti
- Principal Cast: Anna Magnani, Walter Chiari, Tina Apicella, Gastone Renzelli, Tecla Scarano
- Country: Italy
- Year: 1951
- Running Time: 114 min.
- Producer: Salvo D'Angelo
- Screenplay: Suso Cecchi D’Amico, Francesco Rosi, Luchino Visconti
- Cinematographers: Piero Portalupi, Paul Ronald
- Editors: Mario Serandrei
- Music: Franco Mannino
- Awards: Nastri d’Argento Awards 1952 (Best Actress)
- Filmography: L’Innocente (1976), The Damned (1969), The Leopard (1963), Rocco and His Brothers (1961)
- Language: Italian
- Has Subtitles: Yes
- International Sales: Movietime, SRL