The Rose Tattoo (1955)

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

The Rose Tattoo (1955) was directed by Daniel Mann. It's based on a play by Tennessee Williams, who also wrote the screenplay. It stars Anna Magnani as Serafina Delle Rose, a Sicilian dressmaker now living in Louisiana. (Actually filmed in Florida.)One drawback to the film is the miscasting of Burt Lancaster as Alvaro Mangiacavallo, a man who falls in love with Magnani. Lancaster was a good actor, but he's not good enough to convince us he's Sicilian. The second drawback is that the movie has "adapted from a play" written all over it. Director Mann shows us a police chase, a beach scene, and a trip to a church and to a gambling casino in an attempt to "open up" the play into a movie. It just doesn't work. It's unmistakably 1950's Broadway melodrama.However, there was more that was positive than was negative about this movie. Marisa Pavan as Serafina's daughter--Rosa Delle Rose--does a good job. It's an important supporting role, and Pavan excelled in it. (She also looked as if she could be Magnani's daughter.) The important point is that Magnani is wonderful, and the movie works because of her. Magnani was traditionally beautiful as a young actor, and, at age 47, she was still beautiful. However, she was no longer traditionally beautiful. Instead, she has a presence or aura that makes you want to look at her every moment that she's on the screen. She is a force of nature. Director Mann knew this about Magnani, and the great cinematographer James Wong Howe knew how to present this force to us. (I don't usually mention cinematographers in my IMDb reviews, but James Wong Howe won an Oscar for his cinematography in this film.)If you want to see a talented actor, at the full height of her powers, see Anna Magnani in The Rose Tattoo! That's not just my opinion--Magnani won an Oscar for her work in this movie.We saw this film on DVD, and it did well on the small screen. It's a great movie and a piece of cinema history. Find it and see it.

Anna Magnani was a revelation in this, her American debut film, as an earthy, tempestuous and full-blooded woman whose grief over the death of her husband is complicated by the discovery of his infidelity and the attentions of an unwelcome new suitor who holds out the offer of passion now gone from her life. Few actresses had ever made such a fiery arrival on American screens and her performance won her an Oscar as Best Actress. Subsequent screen appearances clearly showed that her acting range did not extend far beyond what she showed here, leading her to be somewhat typecast as a hyper-emotional Italian, but even if her legacy had only been this film, it would be memorable. Burt Lancaster is rather oddly cast as a slightly simple truck driver who has a crush on Magnani's character. Burt's physicality works here, but his obviously greater depth and awareness at times run counter to the live-in-the- moment needs of his not very bright character, and the resulting performance is never completely convincing. Marisa Pavan, the twin sister of better known Italian star Pier Angeli, got a nomination as best supporting actress as the fragile daughter struggling to hold her own grief in check, while searching for her place in a recognizably Tennessee Williams world of sultry Southern backwardness and soap opera passions. Excellent black and white cinematography by James Wong Howe won the film another Oscar and evocative production design created a believable Southern town square around which this otherwise rather stagy adaptation plays out. Like all Tennessee Williams dramas, this one can get somewhat overwrought at times, but Magnani and Pavan make it watchable - if ultimately dismissible - entertainment.

I think in many ways it's hard to see and appreciate "The Rose Tattoo" today. While in 1955 it was a hit and earned Anna Magnani the Oscar for Best Actress, to me today her performance seemed incredibly broad and overdone. At the time, people marveled at her earthiness and intensity--now, many would see this as overacting. To put it very bluntly, she screamed, ranted and acted more like a cow in extreme need of a c-section instead of a real person! Subtle her performance wasn't!As for the story, it has some interesting elements and if the director had pushed for a slower and more restrained performance, I would have enjoyed it immensely. It begins with a man getting killed while being chased by police. He was a smuggler and he left a wife (Magnani) and daughter. Since his death, the wife has gotten in a rut--feeling sorry for herself, behaving horribly towards everyone around her and trying to convince herself that her husband was a much better man than he really was. However, no matter how hard she tries to distract herself by screaming and being unpleasant, these actions can't suffice to distract her completely--she worries that what neighbors say is correct--her husband had been cheating on her. As a result, she cycles between extreme anger and extreme piety--driving her poor daughter crazy in the process. Nothing seems to be able to get her out of this funk until one day (about half way through the film) when she meets a vivacious younger man (Burt Lancaster) who, oddly, seems taken with her! Why? I have no idea, as Magnani's character is a pig in many ways--disheveled and with the personality of a boar! And, speaking of a character who is annoying, what's with Burt Lancaster? As I said above, his character is drawn to Magnani and this makes little sense--nor does his rushing out to get a tattoo to impress her just after he meets her. At first, his character was interesting, but after a while he, too, was anything but subtle. The combination of him and Magnani is simply too much for one movie!I have seen about every Tennessee Williams film and would have to say this is one of the weakest. The plot isn't bad but the characters are just too shrill and tough to believe. The story should have been a lot better. And, frankly, I wonder how Sicilians felt watching this, as the Magnani's character seems to portray these Italians in a less than flattering light.

After hearing about this movie for years I finally saw it in its entirety. What a disappointment!! Burt Lancaster is a character who claims to be the grandchild of the village idiot and whose behavior proves that genetics is a science. His acting is so hackneyed and stereotypical as to be ludicrous and embarrassing. Anna Magnani is over-the-top but sympathetic as the grieving widow who is holding a torch for her husband long after his torch is out. The behavior of the townspeople is more like the inhabitants of a small town in Sicily as filmed by Fellini than the residents of a small town in Louisiana which they are supposed to be. Marisa Pavan is subdued and lovely but interchangeable.