Actor · 1909–1983

Lamberto Maggiorani

3: briefs
13:00: average
39 min: in total

On film.briefs3

Mamma Roma

Pier Paolo Pasolini · 1962

Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1962 drama follows Anna Magnani as a former sex worker striving to secure a respectable future for her teenage son in Rome. When her past resurfaces, their fragile new life unravels. Shot on location near the Appian Way with non-professional actors and a stark, frontal visual style, the film merges neorealist texture with baroque moral gravity. Its power lies in its refusal of catharsis or explanation — grief, shame, and social immobility settle like dust, unshaken.

13:00

Umberto D.

Vittorio De Sica · 1952

A retired Roman civil servant struggles to keep his room, his dignity, and his dog in post-war Italy. Directed by Vittorio De Sica and written by Cesare Zavattini, this 1952 neorealist drama uses non-professional actors, restrained cinematography, and a tightly focused narrative to depict ageing, dependency, and quiet endurance without sentiment or solution.

13:00

Bicycle Thieves

Vittorio De Sica · 1948

Vittorio De Sica's 1948 film follows Antonio Ricci, newly hired to paste up film posters across postwar Rome, whose bicycle, pawned to buy back for the job, is stolen within hours of his first shift. He and his young son Bruno spend the rest of the film combing the city's markets and streets for it, with almost no professional actors in the cast and much of it shot on location. Made for around $133,000, it won an honorary Academy Award before the foreign-language category existed and has been cited since as one of the clearest statements of Italian neorealism.