Film Forum

Italy, 1951
Directed by Luchino Visconti
Starring Anna Magnani, Tina Apicella, Walter Chiari, Gastone Renzelli
Approx. 115 min.

“Perhaps the most unjustly neglected of Luchino Visconti’s early films is this hilarious 1951 comedy, tailored to the talents of Anna Magnani, about a working-class woman who is determined to get her plain seven-year-old daughter into movies. A wonderful send-up of the Italian film industry and the illusions that it fosters, delineated in near-epic proportions with style and brio.” – Jonathan Rosenbaum

A JANUS FILMS RELEASE

Reviews

“Harnessing Magnani’s eruptive melodramatic energy, Visconti shows the life of the cinema to arise from the same root as the theatre.”
– Richard Brody, The New Yorker

“The only Visconti movie where a maternal relationship takes center stage, BELLISSIMA is a disenchanting look at the economics of postwar Italian cinema. Despite a muted style, the film establishes two concerns that would define its director’s career: the idea of cinema as a fantasy world and the sanitization of history.”
– Harvard Film Archive