After years spent working as a prostitute in her Italian village, middle-aged Mamma Roma has saved enough money to buy herself a fruit stand so that she can have a respectable middle-class life and reestablish contact with the 16-year-old son she abandoned when he was an infant. But her former pimp threatens to expose her sordid past, and her troubled son seems destined to fall into a life of crime and violence.

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Criterion Channel

Cast

Anna Magnani

Mamma Roma

Ettore Garofolo

Ettore

Franco Citti

Carmine

Silvana Corsini

Bruna

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Luisa Loiano

Biancofiore

Paolo Volponi

Priest

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Luciano Gonini

Zacaria

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Vittorio La Paglia

Il Signor Pellissier

Piero Morgia

Piero

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Franco Ceccarelli

Carletto

Anna Magnani — Mamma Roma

Anna Magnani (pronounced: mahn-YANEE; 7 March 1908 – 26 September 1973) was an Italian stage and film actress. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress, along with four other international awards, for her portrayal of a Sicilian widow in The Rose Tattoo.

Franco Citti — Carmine

Franco Citti (born 23 April 1935 in Rome) was an Italian actor. He came to fame at the age of 26, playing the title role in Pier Paolo Pasolini's film Accattone. In 1967 he appeared in the title role in Pasolini's version of Oedipus Rex.