The Dryden will screen Mamma Roma (Pier Paolo Pasolini, Italy 1962, 110 min., 35mm, Italian w/subtitles) as part of the Pasolini series.

If Anna Magnani's unforgettable turn in Rossellini's Rome, Open City made her an international star, her stunning performance in Pasolini's controversial second feature confirmed her status as icon. Here, she plays a middle-aged prostitute determined to give her son the bourgeois life she never had, until a figure from the past returns to threaten her dreams. Astonishingly, Pasolini was disappointed with Magnani—he favored nonprofessionals who were authentically "subproletarian"—but no matter: her performance remains one of the greatest in postwar Italian cinema.

[source: George Eastman Museum website, 2019-Oct-21]