Bellissima (Beautiful)

Maddalena Cecconi, married to the master builder Spartaco, lives in the working-class district of Prenestino. The couple has just one child, their eight- year-old daughter Maria: the little girl has a pleasant- looking but hardly beautiful face, even though she is bellissima in the eyes of her mother, who dreams of a bright future for her. When the Stella Film company stages a competition in Rome to choose a young girl to play a role in a new movie, Maddalena decides, against the wishes of her husband, to have her daughter enter it, spending time and money in an attempt to get her the part. After meeting a young con man who extracts more money out of her, and after seeing her daughter humiliated at the screen test, Maddalena goes home in tears. When the director, having realized the little girl’s acting ability, sends someone to offer her a lucrative contract, the woman, now disillusioned, drives him away and is reconciled with her husband.

I made many changes to Zavattini’s original scenario. In the first place the protagonist, who in Zavattini’s story was a clerk, became a worker in the film and as a consequence the action, which was to have been set in the Annibaliano district, was moved to the suburbs, to be precise to Prenestino. Secondly, whereas in the scenario the little girl was definitively rejected, in the film she is selected for the leading role, and instead it is the mother who, after having done everything she could to make her daughter an actress, realizes her mistake and refuses to sign the contract. These are the main structural modifications. But during the shooting I made many others, going down a notably different road from the one traced by Zavattini and envisaged by the screenplay.

PRODUCTION: CSC-Cineteca Nazionale
Via Tuscolana, 1520
00173 – Roma, Italia
Tel. +39 0672294316
Mob. +39 3456204596
diffusioneculturale@fondazionecsc.it

RESTORATION CURATED BY: Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia-Cineteca Nazionale in collaborazione con Compass Film

LABORATORY: Studio Cine S.r.l. (Roma)

WORLD SALES: Compass Film
lorena.libassi@movie-time.it
nicole.libassi@movie-time.it

ITALIAN DISTRIBUTION: Compass Film
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nicole.libassi@movie-time.it

PRESS OFFICE: Gabriele Barcaro – CSC – Cineteca Nazionale
Via Tuscolana, 1524
00173 – Roma, Italia
gabriele.barcaro@fondazionecsc.it