Changing my mind: occasional essays - By Zadie Smith Page 0,78

a young Zeffirelli, from a crowd of bone merchants in a Roman slaughterhouse). But in character, in personality, he is no match for her. He is left to plot weakly with his mother against her (“Mamma, I won’t even bother with her. She always does what she likes anyway!”), though only for the length of a lunchtime, as he eats the meals his mother still cooks for him. He seeks no real alternative to Magnani.

Bellissima is that rare thing in Italian cinema: a film in which the woman is not a question posed to a man. Even more rare: she is not in question to herself. She finds herself perfectly satisfactory, or at least, her flaws cause her no more than the normal amount of discomfort. A less common trait in a female movie star can hardly be imagined.

In the parrucchiere where little Maria is taken for a haircut:Hairdresser: (to Maddalena) I could give you a good style, too.

Maddalena: Don’t even try, no one has managed that.

Hairdresser: I could manage.

Maddalena: (laughing) You’d waste your time!

Like Davis and Crawford, Magnani is an unconventional beauty. Unlike them, she is beautiful without any cosmetic effort whatsoever, and moreover, without any interest in the cosmetic. Cosmetic beauty is not the type that attracts her.

To wit: in the courtyard of her grim casa popolare,64 projected on a giant makeshift screen, a Hollywood blockbuster plays. Maddalena watches, enraptured. Spartaco comes to retrieve her:Spartaco: Maddalena, leave the cinema alone.

Maddalena: Oh, Spartaco, you don’t understand me. Look at those beautiful things, look at where we live. When I see these things . . .

Spartaco: Maddalena, it’s a fantasy.

Maddalena: It’s not!

We might expect to see up there Rita Hayworth in Gilda, peeling off those silk elbow-length gloves. But it is Howard Hawks’s Red River, a wild open plain, two cowboys on their horses. The object of Maddalena’s desire, a herd of bulls crossing a creek.

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The chorus of mothers gossip among themselves. The rumor is that so-and-so has a recommendation of iron (“He was saying how pretty the girl was . . . but he was looking at her mother!” “Ah, now I understand!” “That’s how it is these days!”); the fix is in; the auditions are worthless—it has all already been decided. A typical Roman inside job. Something must be done: they’ll unite to complain, it’s a vergogna, they’ll confront the producer! However, upon consideration, a more attractive, less violent, solution is found: each woman will look to her own recommendation. For one lady’s husband knows the director of the phone company (“What does that matter?” asks Maddalena. The reply: “He’s important”); someone else’s husband has a friend on set; yet another has a Cinecittà waiter in her family.

And Maddalena knows Annovazzi. They meet in the Borghese gardens, dappled in leafy light, the scene of a Shakespearean comedy. “I never come here!” she says, for there exists a Roman life that does not include and never comes near the expats of Monti, or the Forum, the Pantheon, or even the Colosseum. The pair walk to a tree and lean against it like lovers. Annovazzi plays the cynic: “We’re so used to recommendations, both to making and receiving them. . . . In Italy we rely on recommendations: ‘Please don’t forget.’ ‘I assure you.’ ‘I promise you.’ . . . But who are we supposed to remember and why?” The only safe thing, he concludes, is to “put the person who needs your help in a position to ask for that help.”

He strokes her arm, offering her the possibility of the sexual favor instead of the financial. She removes his hand, laughing. “No, this way is much better.” He takes her fifty thousand lire, supposedly to smooth the ground for Maria, in the form of small favors (“A bunch of flowers to the producer of the film, a bottle of perfume for the lover of the producer”). In the event he will spend it on a Lambretta for himself.

“How shrewd you are!”

“It’s a practical way of getting through life.”

Even as she hands over her pocketbook, she knows he can’t be trusted. Later, when she discovers the deception, she only laughs her big laugh. It is a plot point hard to understand if you are not Italian. She pays him for a favor. He buys a bike. She finds out. But she is not angry, because he will still remember her, especially.

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“The big mistake of neorealismo,” claimed Visconti, “to my way of thinking, is its unrelenting and sometimes dour concentration on