Mamma Roma (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1962)

Woman enters a life of ill repute. She gives up her son and promises to resume here life with him and give up her past indiscretions when he is 16. She picks up her boy and takes him off to Rome to start their new life. He is a symbol of her salvation – but she is already tarnished and cannot escape. She cannot escape her pimp--who refuses his own escape into a life of marriage and work in the sticks. She also cannot give up her "friends" from the street. This is who she turns to for aid. As for her son, he c cannot assimilate. He is not the bright, neer-de-well child she had hoped he might be. In the end he bares her cross; but she is not saved through his death. The closing shot: Mamma Roma stairing out her window at the Vatican and the only true source of salvation? Pasolini again weaves an undercurrent of religion, politics and philosophy under the surface of his filmic parable. Beautifully scripted and shot.