THE ROSE TATTOO: Blu-ray (Paramount, 1955) ViaVision Imprint

 Curiously, stars Burt Lancaster and Anna Magnani come a cropper in director, Daniel Mann’s The Rose Tattoo (1955) another blistering descent into Tennessee Williams’s dystopian Southern Gothic portrayal of sincerely flawed humanity. I am still trying to assess the executive logic in photographing the picture in B&W VistaVision – Paramount’s patented presentation of ‘then’ motion picture hi-fidelity, as much of the mise en scene in The Rose Tattoo takes place within the cramped and sweaty little Southern Florida hovel of seamstress, Serafina Delle Rose (Magnani). With few exceptions to ‘open up’ Williams’ original stagecraft, all of the key moments take place inside this two-room set.  And while Magnani manages to navigate these claustrophobic interiors with a genuine voracity for the expressively ravaged Serafina, the picture’s Achilles heel is Burt Lancaster’s off-kilter caricature of earthy Italian truck driver, Alvaro Mangiacavallo. It appears as though Lancaster has taken his cue from the Chico Marx school of Little Italy stereotypes, mercilessly to foot-stomp and pummel every loaded line of Williams’ dialogue into a rare pasta sauce, only to come away with some truly rancid pesto in its stead. It takes almost an hour before Lancaster’s character intrudes on the tormented Serafina’s good will. But when Lancaster’s Alvaro appears, his mark of distinction illustrates what a woefully strained and cheap little imitation it is, butted against Magnani’s real thing.  

It likely helps that Anna Magnani's parentage and birthplace remained shrouded in mystery. Some sources place her in Rome. But director, Franco Zeffirelli claimed Magnani was born to an Italian-Jewish mother and Egyptian father in Alexandria, Egypt. Magnani acknowledged her parents’ marriage in Egypt, but held fast to Porta Pia as her birthplace. Whatever the truth of it, Magnani learned Catholic contrition and piano at a French convent school in Rome. And while Magnani’s grandparents lavished her with praise and gifts, she preferred to ally with the tough kids on the block, later adding, “I hate respectability. Give me the life of the streets, of common people.”  To pay for her furthering education at Eleonora Duse Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Magnani hit the nightclub and cabaret circuit, earning the moniker, ‘the Italian Édith Piaf’. Though she was never to formally study, her instinctiveness ingratiated her to audiences almost by chance. Discovered by Goffredo Alessandrini (later to become her husband), Magnani played for some of Italy’s most noteworthy directors, to include Nunzio Malasomma, Vittorio De Sica, Roberto Rossellini and Luchino Visconti. The Rose Tattoo is Magnani’s American debut. And despite winning high praise from critics, and, winning the Best Actress Academy Award, the picture was not a lucrative gateway to bigger and better things in America. After only two more efforts in Hollywood, 1960’s The Fugitive Kind, and 1969’s The Secret of Santa Vittoria, Magnani retired from acting and returned to Italy, appearing only once more before the cameras, this time for Federico Fellini in Roma (1972).

The true majesty of Magnani’s acting style cannot be adequately critiqued or even put into words. Rather, she is somehow defined as an entity of life itself - never the character as written, expressing, with considerable ease and devout faith, some deep and tortured wellspring of her own transgressive and raw sexuality, panged bitterness at humanity, and, desperation to escape the chronic pain of existing. When she smiles, it is with the radiant joy of a thousand suns. And when she weeps, it truly is monsoon season on the screen. Never is there a moment in which her presentation of these titular highs or staggering lows devolves into even a flicker of affectation. She simply ‘is’ in and of the moment, in tandem, earth-shatteringly vivacious and tragic. It hurts to watch her. It is a pleasure to watch her. It is a distinct and sublime joy to experience such a spellbinding presence on the screen, strangely and only indirectly, to draw attention to herself. As such, we feel for her characters almost as an afterthought, forgetting they are extensions of Magnani – the woman.

Indeed, Tennessee Williams was over-the-moon to have Magnani as his star, stating publicly that she “…was magnificent as Serafina…as unconventional a woman as I have known in or out of my professional world, and if you understand me at all, you must know that in this statement I am making my personal estimate of her honesty, which I feel was complete. She never exhibited any lack of self-assurance, any timidity in her relations with that society outside of whose conventions she quite publicly existed...she looked absolutely straight into the eyes of whomever she confronted and during that golden time in which we were dear friends, I never heard a false word from her mouth.”

Once having seen Magnani in the screen’s Rose Tattoo it is difficult, if not entirely impossible, to imagine Maureen Stapleton as Serafina on Broadway – the role she originated as Magnani's English was deemed too rough around the edges at the time Williams launched his stagecraft. And while Magnani towers in the film version, there are at least two other performances in the picture worth noting. The first belongs to Marisa Pavan as Rosa Delle Rose, Serafina’s daughter, struggling to be free of her father’s reputation and her mother’s bitterly ruptured piety and passion. The twin sister of Pier Angeli, Pavan – 90-yrs. young and still very much with us - entered into a Paramount contract without any formal training. Although her American debut preceded Magnani’s by nearly 3 years, Pavan’s success in The Rose Tattoo likewise earned her an Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actress. She lost to Jo Van Fleet in East of Eden, but was similarly nominated and won the Golden Globe. And finally, there is Hartford-born, Ben Cooper to consider as Rosa’s shy and empathetic love interest, Seaman Jack Hunter. A fresh-faced 22 at the time, Cooper’s efficiently dispatched wholesomeness in The Rose Tattoo serves as a romantic bridge by which the violated and now violently mistrusting Serafina is reminded not all who appear to genuinely love, are merely out for all they can get. Largely relegated to supporting roles in westerns thereafter, Cooper’s performance in The Rose Tattoo is genuine and heartfelt, especially in the moment when he acquiesces to Serafina’s demands to humble himself before the Holy Mother and confide his lack of amorous experience to her.

We are introduced to Serafina Delle Rose, a Sicilian seamstress, living in a sweaty hovel near the Gulf of Mexico. Pregnant with their second child and furiously devoted to her truck-driving husband, Rosario (Larry Chance), Serafina is too blind to see Estelle Hohengarten (Virginia Grey) has Rosario’s lover.  Estelle asks Serafina to make a silk rose-colored shirt for her lover while she runs off to get a rose tattoo on her chest to match Rosario’s. Skulking off, despite Serafina’s quiet protestations he should remain home this evening, Rosario is killed when his truck overturns and bursts into flames while attempting to elude police on a smuggler’s run. When Father De Leo (Sandro Giglio) and a contingent of the local women arrive to break the news, Serafina collapses and miscarries. Fast track, three years later, and the once vibrant Serafina has become a veritable recluse in her home, much to her daughter, Rosa’s embarrassment. While Father De Leo and Rosa’s school teacher (Dorrit Kelton) desperately try to get Serafina to come out of her shell, a local woman, Bessie (Jo Van Fleet) exposes Rosario's infidelity for all to hear. Shamed, Serafina confronts Father De Leo who refuses to corroborate or deny the claim. In the meantime, Rosa becomes enamored with shy seaman, Jack Hunter who, under Serafina’s rigid interrogation, confesses he is still a virgin. Serafina forces Jack to vow this before a statue of the Virgin Mary, and further, to respect Rosa's innocence from now on.

At a local fete, Alvaro takes pity on Serafina’s enduring grief, driving her home in his banana truck. To compensate his time, Serafina offers to sew his torn shirt. Serafina also loans Alvaro the rose silk shirt. The two agree to a cordial détente later in the afternoon. Unaware of its significance, Alvaro returns, having impulsively tattooed a rose on his chest.  Disgusted, and believing this to be a blatant insult, Serafina attempts to throw Alvaro out of her home, but then, demands he drive her to the seedy nightclub where Rosario and Estelle first met and became lovers. Estelle reveals her own tattoo to Serafina. The two women fight, but are pried loose from one another by Alvaro, who takes Serafina home. Realizes her whole life’s deification of Rosario to be a tragic lie Serafina destroys the urn containing his ashes. She also invites Alvaro to visit her again. This time, he arrives severely intoxicated. Humiliated, Serafina leaves Alvaro to sleep off his drunken stupor on her sofa.

Returning home in the middle of the night, Rosa is surprised by this stranger sleeping on the sofa and Alvaro, still drunk, mistakes Rosa for Serafina, attempting to kiss her. An outraged Serafina drives Alvaro from the house. But the following morning, she is surprised to discover Alvaro seated atop of a boat mast outside her home, playfully begging for forgiveness. Serafina and Rosa are embarrassed by this public display. Jack returns, sincerely to ask for Rosa’s hand in marriage. It is willingly given and the young couple rush off together to begin their lives anew. Reconciling her own heart, Serafina calls Alvaro down from his perch, putting the morbid curiosity of her neighbors to shame by suggesting to Alvaro they ‘pick up’ where they left off the night before. As Serafina and Alvaro enter the house, the player piano strikes up a lively tune, eclipsed by their laughter.

Despite its illustrious pedigree and Magnani’s luminous central performance, The Rose Tattoo is a bit of a wet noodle on the screen. VistaVision does not enhance this presentation and neither does Daniel Mann’s thoroughly static direction – too cleverly devoted to the proscenium of Tennessee Williams’ original stagecraft. While there are some interesting and occasionally vibrant vignettes scattered throughout the picture, these never entirely gel into one cohesive and narratively satisfying bit of passionately wrought conjecture and contemplation. Rather than to build on the premise and exploit Magnani’s craft into a groundswell, the story just seems to run on – and on – with intermittent splashes of brilliance arriving well ahead of the thoroughly predictable dénouement. After the initial setup, Mann just settles into the play as written without any pictorial embellishment to move the plot along. The best moments in the movie revolve around the tug-o-war between Serafina, Rosa and Jack’s burgeoning acceptance by Serafina as the man who will take over from her. But again, it’s not enough to make The Rose Tattoo anything better than a diverting and occasionally dull and stilted exercise in finding love and understanding where only moments before each appeared to be in very short supply.

The Rose Tattoo arrives on Blu-ray from ViaVision’s Imprint line-up and in a 1080p transfer that is better than expected, but not nearly as good as it might have been. Given that this is VistaVision format, the results here are solid without ever revealing the impressive amounts of fine detail VistaVision was capable of showcasing. This is another ‘old’ master from Paramount, marketed for third-party distribution without the added care applied to truly make it outstanding. The grayscale has been solidly reproduced. Fine detail is there. But again, it’s not as razor-sharp as it could have been. Age-related artifacts are limited. The image is generally smooth but never entirely crisp. One wishes Paramount had taken the high road here. The 2.0 mono is adequate for this dialogue-driven plot. Extras include an audio commentary from Alan K. Rode and an extremely brief and newly produced featurette where filmmaker, Rob Nilsson extols the virtues of Magnani’s acting. The featurette is bizarre. At just under 8 minutes, it easily wastes half its runtime on outtakes and snippets from the movie, sans Nilsson’s comments on Magnani’s craft. Why bother? There’s also a non-VistaVision theatrical trailer. Bottom line: The Rose Tattoo on Blu is recommended for fans of the grand Magnani. Others may wish to steer clear. It’s just not that good of a movie. Regrets.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

2.5

VIDEO/AUDIO

3.5

EXTRAS

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