The Rose Tattoo
Tags: melodrama

Plot synopsis:
Serafina Delle Rose (Anna Magnani) proudly praises her husband Rosario to her female neighbors in a shopping market, before revealing that she is pregnant with their second child. Returning home she finds Rosario asleep in bed and whispers to him that she is with child. Emerging from his room she finds a young woman named Estelle (Virginia Grey) at the door who wants her to make a shirt for her lover from some expensive silk material. It transpires that Rosario is her lover as, when Serafina is out of the room, she steals a photograph of him from Serafina's sideboard before departing.
Later that night Rosario is out working (he is a van driver who hauls bananas) and Serafina is busy working on the shirt for her customer. The women of the neighborhood discover that Rosario has been killed in a fiery road accident whilst trying to speed away from the police; he was smuggling something illegal under the bananas. When Serafina discovers her beloved husband's demise she collapses, and later the local doctor informs her daughter Rosa (Marisa Pavan) and the women of the neighborhood that Serafina has miscarried.
Three years later Serafina is a recluse, having withdrawn from the world. She has allowed her appearance to deteriorate. It is the day of the high school graduation and the women of the neighborhood are impatiently banging on Serafina's front door for their daughters' graduation dresses, which she has sewn. Rosa is also begging for her graduation dress from her mother, but Serafina has locked them—along with the rest of Rosa's clothes—away. Rosa's teacher turns up in the neighborhood demanding to know what is keeping them. She goes to the Delle Rose household and eventually makes Serafina see sense and she hands over the key.
After much thought Serafina decides to attend her daughter's graduation. During this time two women arrive asking if Serafina can quickly mend their bandanas for a festival to which they are going. Serafina reluctantly does so, but is appalled by their talk of men and reprimands them. One of the women, Bessie (Jo Van Fleet), takes offense and informs Serafina that her late husband was having an affair. Serafina does not go to the graduation ceremony after this revelation, but instead sits alone in the dark until Rosa comes home. She is infuriated when Rosa introduces her to her new sailor boyfriend Jack Hunter (Ben Cooper) and Serafina mistrusts his intentions. After her interrogation, he confides that he is a virgin himself. She forces him to vow before a statue of the Virgin Mary that he will respect Rosa's innocence. Then Rosa and Jack are picked up by a car of friends for a party.
Serafina is still stinging from the revelation that her husband was unfaithful. On a mission to root out the truth, she heads to the church (where a bazaar is being held) to ask the priest if her husband had confessed to an affair with another woman. He refuses to answer and she attacks him. A truck driver named Alvaro (Burt Lancaster) pulls her off the priest, but she tears Alvaro's shirtfront in her attack. Serafina then collapses; she is thrown out of the church, and is mocked by her female neighbors. Alvaro drives the dazed Serafina home in his banana truck. She offers to repair his torn shirt. At her home Alvaro acts the clown, and flatters Serafina with compliments, brashly confiding his life story to her. Some wine is consumed and she begins to talk of her late husband, whom she still idolizes. She mentions that he used to have a rose tattooed on his chest. Serafina loans Alvaro the rose silk shirt that she had sewn the night of her husband's death until she is able to repair the shirt she tore. They agree to meet later that night. Alvaro returns, having impulsively gotten a rose tattooed on his chest. Serafina is disgusted and goes to throw him out, stating that he is dishonoring Rosario's memory. He awkwardly blunders at her; she attempts to throw him out. Reconsidering, Serafina demands that Alvaro drive her to a club her husband used to attend. Once there she meets Estelle who asked her to make a silk shirt for her lover and guesses correctly that she was having an affair with him. Estelle confesses that she was having an affair with Rosario before proceeding to show Serafina the rose tattooed on her chest as a symbol of her love for Rosario. Returning home, Serafina smashes the urn containing Rosario's ashes. She invites Alvaro to return in the night.
Alvaro turns up hours later at the Delle Rose household intoxicated and, mortified by her actions, Serafina leaves him in a drunken stupor and retires to bed. That night Rosa returns home and falls asleep on the sofa. As Alvaro awakes from his drunken stupor he sees Serafina's beautiful daughter lying there asleep and moves over to kiss her. As he does Rosa wakes up and screams, before confronting her mother as to why there is a strange man in the house.
Serafina gets rid of him, but the following morning she finds him on top of a boat mast outside her house begging for her forgiveness. Serafina and Rosa are extremely embarrassed and Serafina refuses to leave the house in order to make him come down, much to Rosa's frustration. At that moment Jack arrives and asks Serafina if he can marry Rosa. Serafina is stunned, but seeing that this is what Rosa wants she gives them her consent and they leave to be married. Serafina then calls Alvaro down from the boat mast before declaring in front of her neighbors that they have to pick up from where they left off the night before. They enter her house and shut the door. A lively pop tune is heard starting up on Serafina's player piano, along with the sounds of their partying and laughter.

Review: Anna Magnani's corrosive performance absolutely dominates this film, which works well in black & white (the overheated emotions seem to leap out of the b&w more starkly than they would out of color); you can't take your eyes off her - it's like watching a train wreck.
The Rose Tattoo is a solid film with terrific performances by 3 Oscar winners: Anna Magnani, Burt Lancaster, and Jo Van Fleet.
Magnani landed the film version after Maureen Stapleton had originated the part on Broadway, and she is terrific as the smouldering Italian woman whose husband is killed when he is caught smuggling.
After years of mourning the dead husband (the Baron), Magnani finally gives in to sexual urges (with Lancaster) only after the swarm of village women (a pack of Italian harpy hags that acts as a Greek Chorus) convince her that the husband had been unfaithful.
Lancaster is good as the simpleton truck driver who serves as the double for the dead husband, right down to the rose tattoo on his chest.
Another rose tattoo shows up on the chest of the husband's floozie girl friend (nicely played by Virginia Grey), which serves as the "proof" Magnani needs to finally believe her husband's cheating.
And Van Fleet is super as the shrieking customer (Magnani is a seamstress); it's no coincidence that Van Fleet won the supporting actress Oscar that year for East of Eden, since her performance in The Rose Tattoo is a world apart from that film.
It even has a fine score written by noted composer Alex North.Magnani grabs hold of the role of Serafina Delle Rose and wrings everything she can out of it.
She has little use for men (and not much more for women) until Burt Lancaster, playing an earthy truck driver, comes along and brings her back to life.
Their courtship is swift and tempestuous.Director Daniel Mann does a good job of making a movie out of what was once a play; only a few times do things get so wordy that you are reminded of the work's origin.
Ten out of ten for Anna Magnani's tour-de-force performance in "The Rose Tattoo," but the film itself falls a notch or two below that level.
Ben Kingsley in "Gandhi" and Daniel Day Lewis in "My Left Foot" come to mind, and Anna Magnani as Serafina Delle Rose in "The Rose Tattoo" can be added to that short list.
The actress seems to physically transform herself before your eyes from a depressed, self-pitying widow, who has been swallowed by grief over the death of the husband that she worshiped, into a flirtatious, earthy woman, who cannot resist the attention and physical attraction of Alvaro, a truck driver, who is played by Burt Lancaster.
Since Lancaster is capable of subtle restrained work such as that in "Atlantic City" and "Field of Dreams," one can only fault director Daniel Mann for not reining in the actor's over-the-top gestures and shameless mugging.The original Tennessee Williams play has been effectively opened up and only occasionally betrays its stage origins.
However, despite its flaws, "The Rose Tattoo" remains a worthy film for its Tennessee Williams lines and the brilliance of Magnani's performance.
Tennessee Williams was a good friend of Anna Magnani, the great Italian screen star.
It was with her in mind he wrote "The Rose Tattoo", but she never played it in the theater because she didn't feel too comfortable, at the time, in doing the play in English.Anna Magnani was born to play Serafina; she smolders the screen every time we see her.
He must awaken Serafina from the self imposed mourning she is experiencing at the time they meet."The Rose Tattoo" has a Greek tragedy feeling.
Rosario has been the only man in her life and she wants to stay at home and not face reality, until the appearance of Alvaro, who manages to win her over with his simple ways.Anna Magnani gives a performance that is larger than life..
It ain't easy to steal the spotlight from Burt Lancaster, but Anna Magnani in her Oscar winning performance managed to do just that.
Of course it helps to have the female role be the protagonist here.In the 1951 season on Broadway, Tennessee Williams's The Rose Tattoo came to Broadway and ran for 306 performances and starred Maureen Stapleton and Eli Wallach in the Magnani and Lancaster parts.
As a result Magnani just withdraws from the world and even tries to turn her daughter, Marisa Pavan, into as a bitter a creature as she is.Enter Burt Lancaster into her life, who's also a truck driver.
Burt was cast in the role because Paramount wanted some box office name as Magnani was not known in this country, though she was Italy's biggest female star.In a recent biography of Burt Lancaster it said that Lancaster was lucky in this part because he grew up in East Harlem, one of the few WASP types there and had many Italian immigrant friends and their families to draw upon for his character.
It's a good performance, Lancaster stops well short of making it a cartoon creation and getting the Italian American Civil Rights group down on him.Still it's Magnani's picture and she dominates it thoroughly.
Guess he got his courage later on.The Rose Tattoo is probably the closest Tennessee Williams came to doing a comedy.
The deficits include bad acting all around (with the exception of the star, Anna Magnani) and an uneven script by Williams (who among other things was apparently clueless about how an adolescent boy and girl, attracted to each other, might talk or behave).Playing the role of the dim-witted but sexy truck driver who courts a grieving widow (Magnani), Burt Lancaster gives a highly exaggerated "comedy performance" that is occasionally embarrassing to watch.
A great natural actor in his other films and noted for his controlled physicallity, Lancaster here gawks, bends, waves his arms, makes faces, cries (clownishly), and is generally ape-like, all the while failing to get inside the character he's portraying.
(Leading American actors have always had a problem convincingly playing people less intelligent than themselves; see Lon Chaney, Jr. in Of Mice and Men or, more recently, Jack Nicholson in Prizzi's Honor for more examples of this.)Under the direction of Daniel Mann (who also directed the play), and intended as a comedy-drama, almost everything in Rose Tattoo is either loud or overblown (though it may have been Williams' wish that it be played this way in a misguided attempt to heighten the humorous dimension of the story).
In some scenes small groups of people rush back and forth like obedient cattle, too obviously responding to off-camera direction; and at the high school prom a male extra noticeably freezes for a second or two as he waits for Marisa Pavan and her sailor dance partner to leave the floor ahead of him.Magnani, for whom the play was written (though she just appeared in the film, after she had mastered the rudiments of the English language), comes across as the only real human being among a slew of posturing marionettes.
Also, I do not feel inspired to read the play itself because I don't think that reading it could compare to watching Magnani's riveting performance through which Magnani's soul itself seems to bleed.Although I cannot think of another film with such an engaging actress, the beginning tone and ambiance of this film reminded me of other Tennessee Williams works.
I had been a fan of Anna Magnani's films long before first viewing "The Rose Tattoo".
Always intrigued by this great actor, my expectations for this film were easily met.Magnani, a middle aged widow without means meets goodhearted Burt Lancaster, but feels she is betraying the memory of her late husband, whom she seems to worship even beyond his grave.
Later the story reveals that this "gem" of a husband had been completely unfaithful and was not much to brag about.Adapted from the Tennessee Williams play, this material transfers nicely to the screen.
It has been years since I viewed this great B&W film with great stars like Anna Magnani,(Serafine Delle Rose)," Wild Is The Wind",'57, who played the role of an Italian woman who was deeply in love with her husband and thought he was a GOD!
Anna Magnani made this her first American film and won many awards for her great acting skills.
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.
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.
When you visit Key West, you can feel the mood and ambiance of the movie even today and the characters from the film seem to come to life.
Magnani did an AMAZING job in this movie an she truly deserved the Oscar that she won for her role as "Serafina Delle Rose".
I said "almost."In the Rose Tattoo, set in an Itallian neighborhood close to New Orleans, the great Italian actress Anna Magnani, turns in her tour de force performance of high histrionics in this delightful farce from the usually grim Tennesse Williams.
She is considerably aided by a gaggle of unknown actresses who play her frumpy, nosy neighbors, and a winning, off-character performance by Burt Lancaster as her clownish suitor.
Even Anna's years of grieving depression over her supposedly wonderful, deceased husband was so ridiculously melodramatic as to be played for laughs.The acting was first-rate from the top to the bottom of the cast.
Burt Lancaster is at his best being a funny unemployed drunk who is in love with a big busted Italian female who has lost her husband when he was running drugs in the back of his truck.
Think of a character equal parts Meryl Streep and Irene Pappas, only Sicilian and rather mad with grief, and you end up with Anna Magnani playing the wonderfully unhinged Serafina Delle Rosa in "The Rose Tattoo."How crazy is Serafina?
Tennessee Williams' play becomes a rather endearing character piece with Magnani and director Daniel Mann working odd angles for maximum audience reaction.Magnani plays Serafina as if she was a character not in a movie but in a song, namely Depeche Mode's "Personal Jesus." For her, every opportunity to fondle her husband's torso is a chance to "reach out, touch faith." She believes so absolutely in his majesty that it's a bit of a blow, to put it lightly, when she discovers he's actually a louse.
Can she break out of her spell and find new love, even if it's a clown wrapped in the body of Burt Lancaster?Lancaster's performance here is both the film's weakest link and testament to the actor's willingness to serve a role at whatever cost.
Whenever he laughs, you groan a bit because it's not convincing, yet you root for him all the same, both because it's Lancaster in a difficult role, and because he represents Serafina's one shot at happiness.Magnani won the Oscar for best actress for her performance here.
Others talk about her straight dramatic moments as witness of her artistry, but her two best moments for me are both comic.In one, she corners a priest to make him confess to her what her husband confessed as part of a Holy Sacrament, something that would play heavy except for the way Magnani cleverly overplays her scene, not so much as you notice because of how emotional her character is, except when you see it a second time and see more clearly her absurd husband-worship overtaking her.In the other, she corrals the boyfriend of her daughter (delectable Marisa Pavin) and makes him promise as a fellow Catholic to respect her daughter's virginity, while the daughter watches with obvious anger at her mother's power play.
It's a rather overdrawn film, with lots of goofy scenes and Lancaster struggling to keep up his end of the proceedings, but when you give "The Rose Tattoo" a chance, you wind up enjoying it more than you may expect.
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.
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.
Like all Tennessee Williams dramas, this one can get somewhat overwrought at times, but Magnani and Pavan make it watchable - if ultimately dismissible - entertainment..
This is the screen adaptation of Tennessee Williams' namesake play which opened on Broadway in 1951, originally is tailor-made for Magnani, but she rejected it then due to her inadequate English expertise; four years later, she shoulders on this film version helmed by theatrical old hand Daniel Mann, which substantially lives up to everyone's expectation and is crowned as BEST LEADING ACTRESS in the Oscar competition, the film also earns two other wins for BEST ART DIRECTION and BEST BLACK & WHITE CINEMATOGRAPHY for the legendary Chinese-American cinematographer James Wong Howe out of a total 8 nominations.Magnani plays Serafina, an immigrant from Sicily to America to marry with Rosario Delle Rose, an Italian man with a baron lineage, but now is merely a truck driver hauling bananas.
Lancaster only emerges in the latter half of the film, but shines in his unusually comedic slapstick; Marisa Pavan who also receives an Oscar nomination, unfortunately pales into insignificance by Magnani as a disobedient daughter with an overfamiliar agency on her plate.
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.
Marisa Pavan as Serafina's daughter--Rosa Delle Rose--does a good job.
(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 has been over fifty years since Anna Magnani played the wonderful and tormented Serafina Della Rosa for Tennessee Williams' Rose Tattoo.
How about Linda Fiorentino who is about the same age as Anna Magnani was for The Rose Tattoo?
Unfortunately, for Susan Hayward, by 1955 Anna Magnani thought that her English was up to task to play in "The Rose Tattoo." She would go on to win all the major acting awards that year including the Academy Award as best actress.
I always believed that Susan Hayward deserved the honor for "I'll Cry Tomorrow."Magnani goes from a hysterical widow who throws objects around to a woman of lust, who is enamored by a simple truck driver played by Burt Lancaster.It is true that the Magnani showed tremendous changes in emotion in her Oscar winning performance.Well, maybe there should have been a tie..
This wasn't as good as Come Back, Little Sheba which was also directed by Daniel Mann and starring Burt Lancaster.
This one stars Anna Magnani in her first English film and she won an oscar for it.
She meets Burt Lancaster, a lonely truck driver who wants to date Magnani.
Grand adaptation of classic Williams' play with Oscar winner Magnani overwhelming us at every turn as Serafina Delle Rose.
I mean - This film was absolutely filled to overflowing with annoying characters and peasant-mentality situations.And casting Anna Magnani and Burt Lancaster as the "lovey-dovey" on-screen sweethearts was, indeed, a stroke of pure asininity of the highest order.
His buxom widow Serafina miscarries, then over a period of years draws more and more into herself, trying to force her lovely teenaged daughter Rosa to do likewise.Anna Magnani won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance, and it also won Best Art Direction and Best Cinematography and received five other nominations including Best Picture and Best Supporting actress for Marisa Pavan.
Story is about an Italian woman in Louisiana named Serafina Delle Rose (Anna Magnani) who becomes a widow when her husband is killed trying to smuggle goods in a truck.
*****SPOILER ALERT*****One day Serafina meets Alvaro Mangiacavallo (Burt Lancaster) who's a truck driver and very open about looking for a nice woman to be with.
Serafina discovers that she also has a rose tattoo on her and this makes her come to grips about her husbands infidelity.
This film was directed by Daniel Mann from Tennessee Williams play and Williams wrote the story with Magnani in mind for the play but she declined because of her lack of English.
Mann had directed the play and when it was certain to be made into a film everyone managed to convince Magnani to take the role.
Good adaptation from Williams story make this an interesting film to watch and Magnani is a marvel to watch..
A truck driver corts a troubled widow.This film is o.k. Anna Magnanis' character can be a tad bit annoying.
Burt Lancasters' performance seems to be forced at times.