Art house: neo-realist icon Anna Magnani shines in Hollywood's The Rose Tattoo

Defying the conventional image of a Hollywood screen goddess, Anna Magnani was 47 years old and an icon of Italian neo-realist cinema when she was tapped for her English-language debut in Daniel Mann's The Rose Tattoo (1955). In terms of physical attributes, she couldn't have been further from A-listers such as Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor. And if the usual casting tradition had been followed, a "pretty" actress would have been "uglified" to play the role of an anything-but-glamorous widow on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

Fortunately, The Rose Tattoo's creative team had other ideas, resulting in one of the era's most mesmerising performances and a best actress Oscar for Magnani. But it almost didn't happen. Tennessee Williams ( A Streetcar Named Desire) had written the original stage play for Magnani in 1951, but at the time she was not linguistically confident enough to perform on Broadway. Four years later, the movie version proved the perfect vehicle to introduce her to audiences who had missed Rome, Open City (1945) and other Italian classics lacking the wide distribution net enjoyed by Paramount, who produced The Rose Tattoo.

The part of seamstress Serafina Della Rose is obviously tailor-made for Magnani. A Sicilian immigrant long resident on America's sultry Gulf Coast, Serafina does not speak flawless English, but has no trouble conveying every nuance of her thoughts. The memory of her Adonis of a husband, whom she refuses to believe was anything but a saint, has overshadowed her existence and had a deleterious effect on her daughter, Rosa (Marisa Pavan).

Matters change with the introduction, halfway through, of truck driver Alvaro Mangiacavallo (Burt Lancaster). The good-natured lug reawakens long dormant feelings in Serafina, who looks at his muscled torso and exclaims, "He has the body of my husband and the head of a clown."

Director Daniel Mann made many efforts to "open up" The Rose Tattoo's theatricality by including on-location shooting in Key West, Florida and expanding the locales, which in the play were confined to Serafina's home, to include such diverse venues as the sleazy Mardi Gras Club and Mamma Shigura's Tattoo Parlour.

Despite these attempts, the film still retains an air of artifice, compounded by coyness in its treatment of sexual repression that, due to the motion picture censorship code, had been dealt with more liberally on stage.