Italian film star Anna Magnani had a reputation for portraying fiery tempered characters in her films in Italy. It was a sort of typecasting that she embraced and channeled into a career of more than forty years. This persona didn’t go unnoticed in American cinemas and in the early 1950’s play-write Tennessee Williams, inspired by what he had seen on screen, wrote The Rose Tattoo basing the lead on Anna with the hopes that she would accept the role. She turned down the offer, not because she didn’t want to play the part but because she was not sufficiently fluent in english to do it. Four years later, as the film version was being developed, she was ready. Her real life ethnicity assisted in coloring her character as a native from Sicily, adding an authenticity that would not have been there had a typical Hollywood actress been cast using an artificial accent. When we see Serafina Della Rose we see someone who is authentically Italian born.
Serafina, a Sicilian seamstress is pregnant with her second child. She lives near the Gulf of Mexico with her teenaged daughter and her husband, a truck driver who has been smuggling goods hidden amongst the bananas. Estelle (Virginia Grey) shows up one day wanting a shirt made up with expensive silk for the man she loves. She has recently gotten a rose tattoo on her chest to match the one he also has, but unbeknownst to Serafina, that man happens to be her own husband who has been cheating on her. That evening he is killed when the police try to arrest him for the smuggling. This sends Serafina into a spiral of depression as she stops taking care of herself and getting overly strict with her daughter Rosa (Marisa Pavan), causing her to push back. When Rosa brings home a boy she has fallen for Serafina at first refuses to accept it, then forces the young man to take an oath to respect her daughter. Later, when Serafina reluctantly starts to have feelings for Alvaro (Burt Lancaster), a goofy man with barely more money than he has common sense, Rosa rightfully calls out her mother for being a hypocrite.
For a film made in the 1950’s this one is surprisingly frank about subjects like sex and procreation. In films just a few years earlier it was basically played off like women just suddenly were pregnant and sex was not something that happened, not referred to even in sanitary terms. Couples had separate beds and couldn’t even be seen sitting on the edge of their spouses mattress, let alone be on it with them. By the mid fifties this was all coming to an end as the Hays Code was being left by the way side. Serafina speaks to Alvaro about the boy her daughter is seeing, stating that “[she’s] innocent, pure. She is or she was. I would like to know which.” There’s talk about her daughter’s virtue being held sacred and Alvaro reminds her that they may get married and then she will lose that virtue. There’s mention of how Serafina got pregnant, her husband having affairs, and the tattoo on the chest of the young woman he was cheating with. The poster for this film shows the girl, back to the camera, throwing open her shirt to expose the tattoo. This movie is filled to the brim with saucy, sexy dialogue and imagery as if it were making up for years of films being scrubbed squeaky clean.
The films is told in two parallel storylines. The primary one, and the one that gets the most screen time, is Serafina and Alvaro. Serafina meets him while trying to convince the local priest to admit her late husband confessed to adultery. She gets heated and violent, ending up knocked unconscious. When she awakens she is being driven home by Alvaro who seems nice enough but also a little too excitable. This is a trait that only gets worse as the film goes on, adding to that excitability with a bad case of stupidity, too. He’s not a moron but some of the decisions he makes are highly questionable. Early on he makes the decision to get a rose tattoo of his own on his chest, thinking Serafina will like it. It’s no surprise that this gesture really upsets her. Likewise when she is obviously uncomfortable sitting next to him he keeps insisting. Finally he takes a seat opposite her, then proceeds to slide it up real close to her anyway. This is a man that cannot read the room. He’s equally inept in his professional life, losing his job because he stays late with Serafina rather than delivering his truck load of bananas.
The parallel story is that of the daughter Rosa and her romance with Jack, a young sailor. These two fall in love quickly and, despite a rough experience when she introduces him to her mother, stay dedicated to each other. Serafina is resistant to this relationship but bends to the inevitable, knowing her daughter is growing up. It is this relationship, along with Alvaro’s strong and overbearing enthusiasm, that eventually gets Serafina to dress up nicer and make an attempt at moving on. This all comes crashing down when she hears about Estelle being the potential woman her husband was having the affair with. A confrontation confirms it when Estelle exposes her chest to reveal the matching tattoo.
This is a slow paced story but that is not a negative observation. It allows Anna Magnani the opportunity to delve into her character’s damaged psyche in a way few films would allot the time for. This time was not wasted and Anna would go on to win an Oscar for her work here. Quite simply it is amazing to watch her struggle with her emotions as she navigates through grief, denial and anger. Burt Lancaster is just awful, though, acting like an overly horny canine trying to hump her leg. His gestures to impress her are poorly thought out and even worse executed. It’s a bizarre performance made even stranger by a goofy haircut. What it does accomplish, though, is to make her realize that through his attempts to impress her by impersonating her dead husband he is showing her, unintentionally, how morbid she’s become.
Tennessee Williams was a lot of things but a connoisseur of Italian culture was not one of them. It’s a pity his muse, Anna Magnani, couldn’t have helped him write the culture better than it is. Every broad caricature in the book is utilized here from the renting of her clothes to the Catholic imagery. It’s not ruinous but it does play at times like Williams learned his Italian culture from watching sitcoms. It’s a smorgasbord of Italian imagery that goes from local flavor to overbearing from time to time. Thankfully Anna is good enough to overcome these shortcomings and make Serafina the type of character worth paying attention to.
This is hardly Tennessee Williams’ best work. A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof are both superior works that were made into critically lauded films. Both are better written plays than The Rose Tattoo and made into stronger films, too. But there is plenty to love in The Rose Tattoo, too. It features an unconventional leading lady who is emotionally fragile and has a compelling arc, even if the leading man is not as compelling. It contains much of the trademark Tennessee Williams innuendo and outright saucy dialogue that was more tamped down in previous films. It also tackles some serious subjects that are still effective seventy years later, too. While not the best of his works, it is well worth seeking it out.
Academy Award Nominations:
Best Motion Picture: Hal B. Wallis
Best Actress: Anna Magnani (won)
Best Supporting Actress: Marisa Pavan
Best Art Direction - Black-and-White: Hal Pereira, Tambi Larsen, Samuel M. Comer and Arthur Krams (won)
Best Cinematography - Black-and-White: James Wong Howe (won)
Best Costume Design - Black-and-White: Edith Head
Best Film Editing: Warren Low
Best Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture: Alex North
____________________________________________________
Release Date: December 12, 1955
Running Time: 117 Minutes
Not Rated
Starring: Anna Magnani, Burt Lancaster, Marisa Pavan and Ben Cooper
Directed By: Daniel Mann
Comments
Post a Comment