Performance Is Personality – Anna Magnani In Bellissima | The Great Acting Blog

Anna Magnani uses the full breadth and force of her personality in Luchino Visconti’s Bellissima. An actor’s personality is their performance. Range does not exist.

 

Anna Magnani was known as “the volcanic mother of all Italian Cinema” and this is almost literally true in Luchino Visconti’s Bellissima. Magnani plays Maddalena Cecconi, a gritty, neo-realist mother, desperately trying to get her young kid started in the movies. Cinecittà Studios has put out a casting call for a child star, and Magnani thinks her Tina fits the bill. Magnani demonstrates the full force and breadth of her personality as she competes among an ocean of Roman mothers to get her kid into the spotlight. 

In Bellissima, we witness the power of Magnani’s will, her fight, her intensity, her fixation on a goal. She wears her heart on her sleeve, unashamed of her belief in cinema or of her battle to make a better life. This is true almost all the way through the film. She is fearless; whether standing up to her grumpy husband or throwing a shoe at an old woman [narrowly missing her head before smashing a window behind her] or attacking the Cinecittà filmmakers themselves for mocking her daughter’s audition. At times she speaks in an intense, rapid staccato, the emotion shimmering across her eyes. At others, she is a melancholy presence as she struggles to live with the frustration of not yet reaching her goal.

But then there are these other moments.

They are few and far between but they are there. These are moments when we see an altogether different part of Magnani’s personality, moments when we see her break out into an extraordinary smile – it is big and generous and true and joyful and dazzling and it is beautiful, and her near overwhelming screen charisma is fully released. It is a natural and deep contrast to the rest of her combative performance. 

Anna Magnani is an actor who explores her own personality to it’s fullest in order to create expression – she is not afraid to reach for the outer-limits of her own being in service to her art. Most actors find a range they are comfortable with and stick to it, as if simply repeating what has already worked – they rarely, if ever, produce a moment of surprise – they stick to this ‘range’. But then, what is range in acting? It is nothing. There is no such thing as an actor’s range. There is only the actor’s personality – and it is up to each actor to decide how hard they are going to work to develop their personality and how much of it they are going to use in performance. Mediocre actors never change, never reveal, they never delight us – it’s just same old. With Magnani however, we are never quite sure what she is going to give us next – with each new moment a unique spark from her personality is spun off. This is a great actor. 

The performance is always the actor, it’s always themselves. The challenge for the actor then, is to gain access to as much of their personality as they can and use it. Magnani shows how.

 

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