Anna Magnani
Kim du Toit
October 27, 2007
6:34 AM CDT
And so, as Italian Week draws to a close, let me look at one of the most magnificent actresses ever to appear on screen: the astonishing Anna Magnani.
Born in the slums of Rome, as a girl she earned money by singing in nightclubs (just like her French counterpart, Edith Piaf), and eventually (and inevitably) got noticed in a couple of stage plays, became a movie actress, and the rest is cinema history.
From Wikipedia:
In Italy (and gradually elsewhere) she soon became established as a star, although she lacked the conventional beauty and glamour usually associated with the term. Slightly plump and rather short in stature with a face framed by unkempt raven hair and eyes encircled by deep, dark shadows, she smouldered with seething earthiness and volcanic temperament.
She did that because she had talent—in the words of one critic, “She conveyed more with one flashing glance of those astonishing dark eyes than most actresses could manage after five years of acting classes.”
And one co-star is said to have remarked: “Absolutely no-one is capable of sharing the scene with her.”
There remains a considerable number of men (and I’m chairman of this club) who just don’t care for the modern-day fad for airbrushed fantasy figures. We are men who prefer their women to be real: women who will take all the crap that life dishes out, chew it up, and spit it right back in life’s face. Sultry-looking women with fire in their eyes and lust in their loins. Women who might look like this:
She married once, got divorced, and never married again, uttering the immortal line: ”Women like me can only submit to men capable of dominating them, and I have never found anyone capable of dominating me.”
I don’t care what anyone says, now that’s sexy.
In the parlance of my youth: ”She’d break your back, buddy.” So what? That’s why there are osteopaths.
I’ve seen Anna Magnani in precisely one movie, the dreadful Secret of Santa Vittoria, and she takes the whole movie in her teeth, shakes it like a dog, and never lets go. Even Anthony Quinn is helpless against her. Now I want to see all her movies; and I will, starting with the one for which she won her Oscar, The Rose Tattoo.
Weekend Women
