Mambo
Robert Rossen named names to the House Un-American Activities Committee — fifty-seven of them. Then he went to Italy and made this ponderous film.
Mambo (1954) didn’t work as a movie, but as a cri de coeur, it's strangely compelling. Here is Rossen’s attempt to justify his betrayal of his former comrades, an anguished plea for understanding, if not forgiveness. He can’t forgive himself, you see, but as we watch his confused heroine Giovanna (Silvana Mangano) abandon her dreams and her integrity under the sway of her ne’er-do-well lover Mario (Vittorio Gassman) and her dissolute aristocratic admirer count Enrico Marisoni (Michael Rennie), we can’t help but notice Rossen’s remorse.
Read the rest of my review on Deathless Prose.
Mambo (1954) didn’t work as a movie, but as a cri de coeur, it's strangely compelling. Here is Rossen’s attempt to justify his betrayal of his former comrades, an anguished plea for understanding, if not forgiveness. He can’t forgive himself, you see, but as we watch his confused heroine Giovanna (Silvana Mangano) abandon her dreams and her integrity under the sway of her ne’er-do-well lover Mario (Vittorio Gassman) and her dissolute aristocratic admirer count Enrico Marisoni (Michael Rennie), we can’t help but notice Rossen’s remorse.
Read the rest of my review on Deathless Prose.
No comments have been added yet.
