It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

I have absolutely never seen anything like this movie before. You have to see this movie.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

I have always had ambivalent feelings towards Pasolini. On the one hand, I like twisted plots, thrill, unpredictable moments, versatile characters and the like, but he is too dallying, has many references to "old" issues and depicts awkward things artificially created, i.e. not based on true events or so. Mamma Roma has its moments, but, in general, it is not catchy, the past within is too schematic, and all male performances are mediocre; black-and-white did not let enjoying of landscapes and town milieu in full either. True, Anna Magnani as the leading actress is good, her voice and facial expressions included, but all in all, the film was just a sophisticated cinematography and a reasoning story about a former prostitute's challenges and opportunities.

It doesn't even have any machine guns in it. I like movies with machine guns, guns that go kaccka-kaccka-kaccka-pow! This pretentious, operatic Italian schlock makes me wish for a good, classy American film like Forrest Gump or The Shawshank Redemption or Braveheart. Roma is the virgin whore and Ettore is the eromenos Christ, that's all well and good, if you're a decadent gay like Pasolini was.On second thought, I love this movie, "Mamma mamma, I'm dying mama ... " It's transcendentally beautiful. You couldn't even make a movie like this today, it would burn up the screen, the movie theater complex, and consequently engulf the surrounding city and country side, and people would rather watch Jack Ass or The Shawshank Redemption besides. I take it to be emblematic of the decadence of our times that this didn't make IMDb's top 250.

Just wanted to point out that in the final scenes, Pasolini shows Ettore in jail (for stealing), strapped to a table, and it's very much like Andrea Mantegna's painting, "The Dead Christ." This might say a lot about what Pasolini thought about Christ's crucifixion, and how we might view Mamma Roma the whore and her son Ettore (perhaps not as mother and son, but as Mary Magdalene and Christ?). This final scene also makes one recall how the opening scene, the marriage of Carmine (the pimp) and his bride, looks so much like DaVinci's painting, "The Last Supper"... and so the film opens with a visual reference to Christ the pimp before he dies, and ends with one of Christ the thief after he dies.So many things about this film have elements of the story of Christ, only they're turned on their head. Ettore's relationship with the loose woman Bruna, his familiar dealing with moneylenders, his lazy and thieving followers, his lack of a trade, his stealing -- it's as if he's the opposite of Christ. And yet Ettore is blessed: he's rooted in nature (he grew up on a farm, he recognizes birds by their songs, acts spontaneously on his natural feelings of anger or lust) and he's set within a story that's essentially about the power of morality and redemption. Mamma Roma is a flawed woman but a good woman who's trying to do the right thing, to mend her ways. And Ettore is not so much an anti-Christ as he is a proto-Christ -- a pre-Christian figure. The film 'Mamma Roma' may have more to do with being a pagan story than a Christian one...

If you think that you know the answer, just watch this masterpiece by the patriarch of the Italian "New Generation" whose work has changed the history of the Italian cinema (and literature). A marvellous poetic, neorealistic look on the pure maternal love and its interaction with the rotten feelings of the real world. The movie has the expressional force of a Greek tragedy, describing the impuissance of ordinary people to alter their fate by believing that "life is so beautiful, if you can think wisely".