The Rose Tattoo stars Anna Magnani and Burt Lancaster and is based on a Tennessee Williams play. Anna Magnani, already a star in Italian films, made her American debut in this role and won a Best Actress Academy Award as well as the New York Film Critics award for her portrayal. It is said that when Tennessee Williams wrote the play he had Magnani in mind for the lead, after watching her in another production. Burt Lancaster co-stars in a departure from his usual complicated male characterizations.

Serafina Delle Rose (Magnani), seamstress in a small Italian-American community, is so consumed with grief over her husband's death that she sinks into the depths of self-pity and loses touch with the real world. As a young girl, Serafina's family arranged her marriage to Rosario Delle Rose, descendant of Sicilian nobility, who Serafina had never met. She resigned herself to a life without love. But, when she meets Rosario, she is spellbound by his physical beauty and overwhelmed by what she considers good fortune. She not only falls in love with Rosario but comes to worship him, placing him on a pedestal as a man superior to all others.

After they marry, Rosario becomes a truck driver, making deliveries for a banana company. Serafina does not know that he is also smuggling illegal merchandise in his truck. While being chased by the police, Rosario has an accident and is killed. Totally giving in to her grief, Serafina is devastated and loses interest in everything except her memories of her husband--her "rose". Her adoration for her dead husband is still so great that she cannot bear to have him buried and, instead, has him cremated, keeping his ashes in her home as part of a kind of shrine.

She neglects her appearance and isolates herself from everyone in the small town, except to take in sewing. In time, even the sewing suffers as she often forgets to complete her sewing jobs. One of those jobs was to make a blouse for a woman from town. When the woman comes to pick up to blouse, it is not ready. The woman angrily berates Serafina and there is an argument. Serafina criticizes the woman as being little more than a prostitute (which is true). Enraged, the woman takes revenge by telling Serafina about Rosario's long-time affair with a woman in town. She says that they were so much in love that the woman had gotten a rose tattoo to match the one that Rosario had on his chest.

Burt Lancaster enters the story when Serafina, newly devastated with the news, goes to the church to seek the counsel of the priest. A festival is taking place and Serafina is introduced to Alvaro Mangiavello (Lancaster), the brother of a church member. He takes Serafina home when she becomes distraught over the priest's inability to answer her questions. Alvaro is a truck driver for a banana company, just as Rosario was. That, however, is where the similarity ends. Alvaro is an open, likable hulk of a man that loves life and loves to laugh. He is a simple man with simple dreams and is hardly the type of man Serafina can take seriously. While he is immediately taken with her, she sees him as something of a fool. In spite of herself, however, she finds that she is somehow attracted to Alvaro.

The rest of the film explores the relationship that grows between the two and how Serafina accepts the fact that her husband was only human and how she adjusts by learning to live and love again. A subplot of the story involves Serafina's fifteen-year-old daughter Rosa (Marisa Pavan), who is graduating from high school. Rosa falls in love with a young sailor who worships her in much the same way that Serafina worshiped Rosario.

The Rose Tattoo is a very passionate story, not only in the subject matter but in the way the dialog is delivered. The characters, particularly Magnani, speak their lines with such intensity and emotion that the film makes you feel that you are almost a part of the story. Most of the lines are literally shouted by the actors, yet the whole effect is totally believable. Magnani is excellent as the lonely widow who returns to reality and allows love to re-enter her life. Burt Lancaster also does a great job in his role, though his character might be considered a little over-the-top.





Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: VHS