Anna Magnani

At 65 years old, Anna Magnani has this physical status:

Born in Rome, she gained her fame through the Academy of Dramatic Art in Rome by performing in nightclubs. When she was 18 months old and remained disabled, her only child was crippled by polio. She was referred to as "La Lupa" in Rome's "perennial toast" and a "living she-wolf symbol" of the film. Time referred to her as "fiery," and drama critic Harold Clurman said her behavior was "volcanic." She was "passionate, fearless, and thrilling" in the field of Italian cinema, according to film historian Barry Monush, who calls "the volcanic earth mother of all Italian cinema." "The greatest acting genius since Eleonora Duse," director Roberto Rossellini said. Playwright Tennessee Williams began to love her acting and wrote The Rose Tattoo (1955), a film in which she was nominated for Best Actress by the Academy Award for the first Italian ever - and first non-English speaking woman to receive an Oscar.

She appeared in The Blind Women of Sorrento (La cieca di Sorrento, 1934), and then became well-known in Rossellini's Rome, Open City (1945), which is seen as the start of the Italian neorealism movement in cinema after meeting director Goffredo Alessandrini. In films such as L'Amore (1948), Bellissima (1951), The Fugitive Kind (1960) and Mamma Roma (1962), she became well-known for her dynamic and forceful portrayals of "earthy lower-class women." Magnani was already "one of the most dazzling actresses since Garbo" as early as 1950.

Early years

Magnani's parents and birthplace are uncertain. According to some, she was born in Rome, but others suggest Egypt. Marina Magnani was her mother. Franco Zeffirelli, an Italian-Jewish mother and Egyptian father, was born in Alexandria, Egypt, to an Egyptian-Jewish mother and Egyptian father, and "only later did she become Roman when her grandmother took her over and raised her in one of Rome's slum districts." Magnani herself stated that her mother was born in Egypt but that she had to return to Rome before giving birth to her at Porta Pia. She did not know how the rumors of her Egyptian birth got off. She was enrolled in a French convent academy in Rome, where she learned to speak French and play the piano. She also acquired a passion for acting after seeing the nuns stage their Christmas plays. This period of formal education lasted until the age of 14.

She was a "plain, frail child with a forlornment of spirit." Her grandparents were compensated by her grandparents' pampering her with food and clothing. Despite growing up, she is said to have felt more at ease with her "more earthly" companions, often befriending the "toughest kid on the block." "I hate respectability," she proclaimed in her adult life. "Give me the life of the streets, of regular people."

Eleonora Duse Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in Rome studied Dramatic Art at age 17. Magnani performed in nightclubs and cabarets, earning her the nickname "the Italian Édith Piaf." Micky Knox, her actress, claims she "never studied acting properly" and began her career in Italian music halls performing traditional Roman folk songs. "She was instinctive," he writes. "She had the ability to summon emotions at will to move an audience to tell them that life on the stage was as real and natural as life in their own kitchen." Magnani was considered a "outstanding actor" in Anna Christie and The Petrified Forest films, according to film critic David Thomson.

Personal life

Magnani used to make sarcastic remarks about the Italian Fascist Party during Benito Mussolini's reign.

In 1935, Goffredo Alessandrini, her first film director, married her, two years after he discovered her on stage. She went from full-time acting to "devote solely to her husband" after they married, although she continued to appear in smaller film roles. They arrived in 1942, but they were not married.

Magnani had a love affair with actor Massimo Serato, by whom she had her only child, a son named Luca, who was born in Rome on October 29th 1942 after her exile from Alessandrini. Luca contracted polio and then lost the use of his legs due to paralysis at the age of 18 months. Magnani expended the majority of her early earnings for consultants and hospitals as a result. "I know now that it's worse when they grow up," she said after seeing a legless war soldier drag himself along the sidewalk and determined that enough money to "shield him forever from want."

While working on Roma, Città Aperta aka Rome, Open City (1945), she fell in love with director Roberto Rossellini in 1945. "I thought I had found the right guy at last." [He] had lost a son of his own, and I felt we knew each other." We had the same artistic convictions as well." Rossellini had grown violent, tumultuous, and cynical, and they argued often about films or out of envy. "They threw crockery at each other in a fit of rage." Nevertheless, as artists, they complimented each other well when collaborating on neorealist films. When Rossellini fell in love with and married Ingrid Bergman, the two women finally broke apart.

Magnani was a mystic, consulted astrologers, as well as believing in numerology. She also appeared to be clairvoyant. She ate and drank very little, and if anything more than black coffee and cigarettes, she could subsist for lengthy stretches of time. However, her sleep habits had a lot of influence on her sleep: "My nights are appalling," she said. "I wake up in a state of nerves and it takes me hours to get back to reality." Perhaps her strangest feature was her obsession with defleating street kittens with her thumbnails.

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Acting career

Magnani was performing in experimental plays in Rome when she was discovered by Italian filmmaker Goffredo Alessandrini in 1933. The two married in the same year. Nunzio Malasomma produced The Blind Woman of Sorrento, her first major film role (La Cieca di Sorrento, 1934) and Geoffredo Alessandrini directed her in Cavalry (Cavalleria, 1936). Magnani starred in Teresa Venerd (1941), a film directed by Vittorio De Sica. "First True Film" by Magnani, De Sica said of him. She plays Loletta Prima, De Sica's girlfriend, Pietro Vignali, in the film. Magnani's roar was described as "loud, overwhelming, and tragic," De Sica said.

Magnani's in Roberto Rossellini's neorealist Rome, Open City, won international attention (Roma, città aperta, 1945). Magnani's character dies fighting to save her husband, an underground fighter against the Nazis in a film about Italy's final days under German occupation during World War II.

L'Amore (1948), a two-part film starring The Miracle and The Human Voice (Il miracolo) and Una voce humana, were among Rossellini's other collaborations. Magnani, a former outcast who insists the baby she is carrying is Christ, plumbs both the sadness and the dignity of being alone in the world. The new film, which is based on Jean Cocteau's play about a woman who is desperate to resurrect a friendship over the telephone, is based on Jean Cocteau's play about a woman trying to resurrect a love relationship based on the telephone. Magnani's deafening moments of silence transform into cries of hysteria.

Rossellini said after The Miracle that she promised to direct Magnani in a film he was preparing, which he said would be "the crowning vehicle of her career." However, when the filmplay was complete, Ingrid Bergman, Rossellini's lover, took the role for Stromboli. Magnani's personal and professional relationship with Rossellini was permanently ended.

Magnani played Volcano (1950), which was supposed to have been made to promote a comparison. 125 Both films were shot in similar locations of Aeolian Islands, only 40 kilometers apart; both actresses appeared in a neorealist style; and both actors were shot simultaneously; "In an atmosphere of rage," life wrote, "journalists were licensed to one or two of the troubled camps" in Via Veneto (boulevard in Rome), where Magnaniacs and Bergmaniacs frequently clashed frequently." However, Magnani regarded Rossellini as the "greatest director she ever fought for."

In Luchino Visconti's Bellissima (1951), she portrays Maddalena, a blustery, obstinate stage mother who drags her daughter to Cinecittà for the 'Prettiest Girl in Rome' competition, with hopes that her plain daughter will be a celebrity. Her emotions in the film changed from those of rage and humiliation to maternal love.

Magnani went on to appear in Jean Renoir's film The Golden Coach (Le Carrosse d'or, 1952), before she was cast as Camille (stage name: Columbine). A woman torn with a passion for three men - a soldier, a bullfighter, and a viceroy. Renoir called her "the most beautiful actress I've ever worked with."

In Daniel Mann's 1955 film The Rose Tattoo, based on Tennessee Williams' play, she played the widowed mother of a teenage daughter. Burt Lancaster was co-starring, and it was Magnani's first English-speaking role in a mainstream Hollywood film, receiving the Academy Award for Best Actress. "If she hadn't found an outlet for her ferociousness," Lancaster, who portrayed a "lusty truck driver," said.

Magnani's appearance in the film "displays why she is unquestionably one of the best screen actresses of all time," film historian John DiLeo wrote.

Serafina on Magnani was a good actress of her performance, and Tennessee Williams based her story on Magnani as "the most unpredictable emotional actress of her generation," according to Time. Williams argued for why he defended Magnani's role in his Memoirs:

Magnani's English was too poor at the time for her to perform on Broadway, as Magnani's was first staged on Broadway. Magnani received several Best Actress awards for her work, including the BAFTA Film Award, the National Board of Review, USA, and the New York Film Critics Circle Awards. When she was named the Oscar winner, an American journalist called her in Rome to tell her the news; her opposition was convincing her that he wasn't joking.

Magnani appeared in The Fugitive Kind (originally titled Orpheus Descending) directed by Sidney Lumet, in which she played Lady Torrance and starred with Marlon Brando, she appeared with Tennessee Williams. Orpheus Descending, Magnani's original screenplay, was another of Magnani's works, but she did not appear in the Broadway production. "She played a woman "hardened by life's cruelty and a loss that will not fade." In one of her early roles, Joanne Woodward co-starred a teenager. Williams wrote an article for Life about why he chose Magnani for the role:

Magnani, the wild, wild woman (Nella Citta' L'Inferno, 1958) paired Magnani with Giulietta Masina in a women-in-prison film.

Magnani, both the mother and the killer, playing an irrepressible prostitute determined to give her teenage son a respectable middle-class life in Pier Paolo Pasolini's Mamma Roma (1962). Mamma Roma, one of Magnani's critically acclaimed films, was not released in the United States until 1995, being the subject of controversies 33 years ago. By now, she was dissatisfied with being typecast in poor women's roles. "I'm bored stiff with these everlasting parts as a hysterical, booming working-class woman," Magnani said in 1963.

"In one of her last film appearances, The Secret of Santa Vittoria (1969), she co-starred with Anthony Quinn, and the twosomesome battle after Jimmy Cagney smashed Mae Clarke in the face with a quarter of a grapefruit" was described by Life as "perhaps the most memorable battle since Jimmy Cagney smashed Mae Clarke in the face with a grapefruit." Magnani and Quinn did feud in private outside of the cameras' view, but their animosity spilled over onto their scenes:

In Federico Fellini's Roma (1972), she later played herself (within a dramatic setting). Magnani was quoted as having said, "The day has gone when I deluded myself that making films was art." Today's movies are made up of...intellectuals who often make it sound as though they're teaching something."

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