While she was beginning to receive offers from Hollywood once more, following Mamma Roma and Autant-Lara’s Le Magot de Josefa, Anna Magnani played the role of one of the “monsters” in Nanni Loy’s film, which reprised the model pioneered by Dino Risi in I mostri, disguising it as an inquest into the habits and character flaws of the ordinary Italian during the Economic Miracle. Anna Magnani is the protagonist of the last of the 25 sketches and episodes which comprise the five sections of the film, again playing the role of mother, but this time with an ironic touch (her pliant and miserable husband is played by Andrea Cecchi). She is the one who supports and guides the family over the crossing which lends the episode its title, in other words, the pedestrian crossing in Piazza Pio XI in Rome where the incredible traffic makes even a weekend outing to buy one’s children an ice-cream a tricky and risky endeavour. Within the limitations posed by the short satirical sketch, Magnani again offers up a portrait of an amusing and exuberant ordinary woman. Moreover, she does not “forego the opportunity to embellish the screenplay with the occasional unexpected improvisation, such as when she swings her handbag at the bonnet of car whose driver made a vulgar comment at her elder daughter” (Matilde Hochkofler).

Alice Autelitano