Anna

What a movie , this is the best Italian movie from he early 50s Silvana Mangano at the top of her game very beautiful , sensual and fantastic the musical number are great and the song El negro sumbon is extraordinary , La Mangano never was better here she is better than in Bitter Rice , Silvana Mangnao love to be a mother more than a movie star and for sometime she retired to have children with her husband producer Dino di Laurenti eventually Silvana comeback to the movie and she was as good as always she did few movies for Luchino Visconti and Pier Paolo Pasoline all of then were great, La Mangano die in 1989 of cancer she die in Madrid Spain her life at the end was sad her son die in a plane crash in 1981 she never recovery from his death

I saw the movie 'Bitter Rice" and 'Anna' as a young woman, and they and the star, Sylvana Mangano had a galvanizing affect on me. I went to Catholic convent school as a youngster but was enrolled in public schools in the fourth grade so I identified with convent life.

I have never forgotten the songs she sang nor her leading man, Vittorio Guzeman. Only tonight (March 30, I thought to enter her name on a music site and was amazed when the two songs appeared! I down-loaded them (Non Dimenticar) and (Anna)! I think the movies above mentioned are the greatest movies of all time. Haven't been able to see either of them since I was that young girl...

I loved the musical numbers. I wish I had a truly preserved copy of this movie. I never knew this movie existed until I saw "Caro Diaro". I have become a Silvana fan! "Silvana has 50 different faces, it all depends on which way she will face the camera. Each face she has, is truly beautiful. Bless Her Heart.............

This is melodrama with a capital M ,a genre which was thriving in the Italian cinema of the fifties. Amedeo Nazzari and Yvonne Sanson were par excellence the king and the queen of the soap opera ;if you like melo, you'll like it .Silvana Mangano , on the threshold of a brilliant career ,plays a nun -a recurrent feature in this kind of movie and in photo love stories - devoted to her patients in the hospital where she works as a indefatigable nurse; the first thirty minutes are given over to her relationship with her patients ;but mother superior (played by French Gaby Morlay ,herself often cast in melodramas ,"le voile bleu" (1942)being the best example ,both this film and "Anna " have much in common) thinks that maybe she's not ready to take her definitive vows .

Hence the long flashbacks which reveal Anna 's tormented past , where two men, the loyal Raf Vallone and the baddie Vittorio Gassmann play a prominent part ;but it takes about thirty minutes before them, which is a good thing ,considering the denouement which , eventually ,makes sense.

Anna (Silvana Mangano) is a nun who works at a hospital taking care of patients, but the arrival of Andrea (Raf Vallone) will bring forward memories from her past.

This is the movie where the song "El negro zumbon" comes from. A song performed by Flo Sandon that became a hit single and was also featured in "Caro diario" from 1993, where we can see Nanni Moretti dancing in front of a TV in a shop.

Director Alberto Lattuada introduces us to Anna in her present situation as a nun working among doctors, but the coming of a new patient takes us to the past where we can see its protagonist's life before she became a nun.

Anna was a nightclub singer who captivated many clients every night performing songs. It is here Vittorio (Vittorio Gassman) was part of her life as the bartender in said club.

Thematically, the film explores how past and present collide, creating dilemmas with love at its core. Anna, as a sister working in the hospital, is something very much appreciated, but will this be enough to silence the voices now awakened that beckon her to follow her heart?