The Rose Tattoo (1955)
Anna Magnani: Serafina Delle Rose
Photos
Quotes
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Serafina Delle Rose : I hate to start to remember, you know? And then not remember, you know?
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Estelle Hohengarten : I have some silk with me I want made into a shirt. There.
Serafina Delle Rose : Wonderful. Look at that colore. Rosa, huh? Wonderful stuff for a blouse, pajamas.
Estelle Hohengarten : Oh, I want a man's shirt made out of it.
Serafina Delle Rose : Silk this color for a - for a shirt for a man?
Estelle Hohengarten : Well, this man's wild like a gypsy. He likes to feel silk on his skin and wants everything rose-colored.
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Serafina Delle Rose : A woman should not encourage a man to be wild. Never.
Estelle Hohengarten : If a man's wild, he's hard for a woman to hold. But if he's tame, would a woman want to hold him?
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Serafina Delle Rose : Ah, I like the smell of rose oil in your hair.
[kiss]
Serafina Delle Rose : Good. Good.
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Serafina Delle Rose : Where is somebody, please, to carry this package for me on the street? My husband don't allow me to carry big packages like a horse on the street. Please!
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Serafina Delle Rose : Don't speak. Don't speak. Don't speak. Don't speak. Don't speak. Don't speak. Don't speak. Please don't. Don't speak. Please don't. Don't speak. Don't speak. Don't speak, please. Don't speak. Don't speak.
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Serafina Delle Rose : I'm a married woman in business. I don't know nothing about wild men and wild women.
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Serafina Delle Rose : Go in the house. And wash your face with saltwater and throw the saltwater away. Go in the house! Go in, quick. She's coming! Malocchio.
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Serafina Delle Rose : I'm dressed okay! I'm not naked!
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Serafina Delle Rose : You see? I got a wild thing in the house.
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Serafina Delle Rose : You don't study no civics tonight.
Rosa Delle Rose : "Don't study no civics." Why do you talk like you just came over in steerage? This isn't Sicily, Mother, and you are not a baroness. You do sewing. Daddy - Daddy hauled bananas.
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Alvaro Mangiacavallo : Rose?
Serafina Delle Rose : How do you know my name?
Alvaro Mangiacavallo : What other name could it be?
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Serafina Delle Rose : Here is the memory of my husband, with a - with a body like a young boy and skin on him smooth and sweet as a yellow rose petal. I'm satisfied to remember, because I had the best, and not the second best, but the only best, a rose.
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Serafina Delle Rose : I'm satisfied to remember the love of a man that was mine, only mine. Never touched by nobody. Nobody but me. Just me.
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Serafina Delle Rose : We are Sicilians. We don't leave the girls with the boys they are not engaged to.
Seaman Jack Hunter : Mrs. Delle Rose, this is the United States.
Serafina Delle Rose : I know, but we are Sicilians. We are *not* cold-blooded. My girl is innocent, pure. She is or she was. I would like to know which.
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Seaman Jack Hunter : Look, I come home after three months at sea. My sister was going to a high-school dance, and she took me with her. And there I met your daughter.
Serafina Delle Rose : What did you do?
Seaman Jack Hunter : At the dance? We danced.
Serafina Delle Rose : What did you do after that?
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Serafina Delle Rose : Who are you? What are you?
Rosa Delle Rose : Mama, I just introduced him. His name is Jack Hunter.
Serafina Delle Rose : Hunter?
Seaman Jack Hunter : Yes, ma'am, Hunter. Jack Hunter.
Serafina Delle Rose : What are you hunting, Jack?
Rosa Delle Rose : Mama. Mama.
Serafina Delle Rose : What all of them are hunting. To have a good time, and the devils cares who pays for it. I'm sick of men, and I'm sick of women.
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Serafina Delle Rose : Why do they make them Navy pants so tight? I don't know.
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Seaman Jack Hunter : This is the first time I really wanted to.
Serafina Delle Rose : Wanted to what?
Seaman Jack Hunter : Make love.
Serafina Delle Rose : You, a sailor.
Seaman Jack Hunter : Well, I had opportunities to, but - well, I always thought of my mother.
Serafina Delle Rose : Huh?
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Serafina Delle Rose : I know what men want. Not to eat ice cream with girls or dance on the floor, no. And boys are the same, only younger. Come here.
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Serafina Delle Rose : You see what I got? A wild thing in the house.
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Serafina Delle Rose : You ladies, please, go. Play with the bingo.
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Serafina Delle Rose : I thought he would be ugly. I couldn't speak. I couldn't speak from the moment I saw him till the night after the marriage. Then, I said only, "Oh, love." "Oh, love." I had married a rose. I didn't know I was going to marry a rose. I couldn't speak nothing in English except, "Oh, love." "Oh, *love*." "Oh, love."
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Alvaro Mangiacavallo : When somebody else is crying I gotta cry too. I'm sympathetic. I got too much of a heart.
Serafina Delle Rose : Don't cry. Why should you cry?
Alvaro Mangiacavallo : I know. It ain't like a man.
Serafina Delle Rose : Oh, a man sometimes has to cry like anyone else.
Alvaro Mangiacavallo : You're very understanding. Sometimes a man has to cry the same as a woman.
Serafina Delle Rose : A man is not so different from anyone else.
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Father De Leo : I'm gonna talk to you honestly, as your spiritual father. I am shocked. I am shocked at the change in your - in your appearance and behavior since the loss of your husband. Grief is a natural and dignified thing, but like every other emotion, Serafina, it can become excessive. Then - then it becomes a sort of self-indulgence. I knew this was going to happen when you refused to obey the laws of the church and had your husband cremated. I remember you dressed in blue silk. Yes, yes. Like a lady wearing a piece of the weather. You walked tall and proud. Now, you crouch and you shuffle. You - you live and dress like a convict. You have no companions. You're rude to your neighbors. You don't mix with the women who...
Serafina Delle Rose : They make the life without glory. They make the life without glory. I gave my husband much glory. I was the peasant, but I gave him glory. I came to him with one dress, but I brought him glory. He was a baron and I brought him glory. I brought him glory, glory. Glory. I don't believe that he took this glory I gave him and gave me horns. I don't believe he gave me horns, Father!
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Serafina Delle Rose : You know, my husband, he had this rose tattoo on his chest. One night I woke up with a burning pain on me here. I turned on the light in the bedroom, and I looked in the mirror. On my breast, I saw the rose tattoo of my husband. On me here, his tattoo.
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Serafina Delle Rose : Nobody knows how lonely someone can be.
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Serafina Delle Rose : Oh, Madonna Santa. Madonna Santa, my husband's body with a head of a clown. A clown that smells like a goat.
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Alvaro Mangiacavallo : Oh, I like a lady that laughs with all her heart.
Serafina Delle Rose : And a lady that cries with her heart?
Alvaro Mangiacavallo : I like everything a lady does with her heart.
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Serafina Delle Rose : I liked what you say. That bodies decay, but the ashes always stay clean. Immacolato.
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Alvaro Mangiacavallo : Seta! Seta puro! Oh, this shirt's too good for Mangiacavallo. Everything here is too good for Mangiacavallo.
Serafina Delle Rose : Nothing's too good for a man, if the man's good.
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Serafina Delle Rose : Excuse the way I'm not dressed. I'm not always like this, no. Sometimes I fix myself up, yeah. When my husband was living, when my husband comes home - when he was living - I had a clean dress on, you know? And sometimes even - even I put a rose in my hair.
Alvaro Mangiacavallo : A rose in your hair would be pretty.
Serafina Delle Rose : Oh, yeah, but not for a widow. It's not the time of roses.
Alvaro Mangiacavallo : Why? You make a mistake. It's always for everybody the time of the roses.
Serafina Delle Rose : Yeah?
Alvaro Mangiacavallo : The rose is - the rose is the heart of the world like the - like the heart is the heart of the body. How's that? Good, eh? But you, Baronessa, you know what I think you have done?
Serafina Delle Rose : What have I done?
Alvaro Mangiacavallo : You have put your heart in the marble urn with the ashes.
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Serafina Delle Rose : How does it feel, the silk on you?
Alvaro Mangiacavallo : Just feels like a girl's hands on me.
Serafina Delle Rose : It will make you less trouble, believe me.
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Alvaro Mangiacavallo : I didn't expect to see you looking so pretty. You're a young little widow, you know?
Serafina Delle Rose : You are - fix yourself up.
Alvaro Mangiacavallo : Yeah. I went to the Ideal Barbers. I got the whole works, including the bath.
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Serafina Delle Rose : I like it! I like it! I like. I like the smell of it. I like.
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Serafina Delle Rose : Chocolates. Thank you, but, you know, I'm too fat to eat candy.
Alvaro Mangiacavallo : Oh, no.
Serafina Delle Rose : I can't.
Alvaro Mangiacavallo : Oh, no. You're not fat. You're just pleasing and plump, you know?
[pats Serafina's bare arms]
Serafina Delle Rose : Yeah. Don't make me nervous now, huh?
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Alvaro Mangiacavallo : Did he have a tattoo?
Serafina Delle Rose : Did who have a what?
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Alvaro Mangiacavallo : You don't like my poetry?
Serafina Delle Rose : No, I don't like your poetry!
Alvaro Mangiacavallo : How can a man talk to you?
[forceful kiss]
Serafina Delle Rose : No, please! Is that your poetry? Is that your poetry?
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Alvaro Mangiacavallo : Don't you feel self-conscious with all the light on? Everybody looks in. They watch us. They see what we do.
Serafina Delle Rose : Nothing is going on here to be ashamed of.
Alvaro Mangiacavallo : Nothing.
Serafina Delle Rose : Nothing!
Alvaro Mangiacavallo : Nothing.
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Alvaro Mangiacavallo : I got a tattoo.
Serafina Delle Rose : No, really?
Alvaro Mangiacavallo : Yeah!
Serafina Delle Rose : Oh, you make me laugh. What kind of a tattoo you got?
Alvaro Mangiacavallo : What kind do you think?
Serafina Delle Rose : Oh, it's easy. A South Sea girl without clothes on.
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Alvaro Mangiacavallo : The night is warm, but my hands are freezing.
Serafina Delle Rose : Bad circulation.
Alvaro Mangiacavallo : Too much circulation. I feel the sweet warmth of a lady. You know?
Serafina Delle Rose : You talk a sweet mouth to fool a - to fool a woman, huh?
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Serafina Delle Rose : It's too hot tonight. You know how a tin roof is.
Alvaro Mangiacavallo : Yeah, I know. It catches the sun all day - and it don't cool off until midnight.
Serafina Delle Rose : Yeah.
Alvaro Mangiacavallo : Then it gets hot in the bedroom, and the covers, they...
Serafina Delle Rose : No, please! Please.
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Serafina Delle Rose : You make a mistake.
Alvaro Mangiacavallo : You make a mistake.
Serafina Delle Rose : Both of us make a mistake tonight. Both of us make a mistake!
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Alvaro Mangiacavallo : You turned out the lights.
Serafina Delle Rose : Well, the - the moon is enough.
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Serafina Delle Rose : Take me to the Mardi Gras now, please!
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Alvaro Mangiacavallo : [Serafina starts hitting Alvaro] I didn't know what I was doing! I got all twisted around in the house. Signorina, young lady, I thought you was your Mama.
Serafina Delle Rose : "Your Mama"? Oh, please!
Rosa Delle Rose : Mama. Mama, stop!
Serafina Delle Rose : Sporcaccione!
Rosa Delle Rose : Mama!
Alvaro Mangiacavallo : Baronessa, please! Don't!
Serafina Delle Rose : Don't "Baronessa" me.
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[last lines]
Serafina Delle Rose : Now we can go on with our conversation.
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Serafina Delle Rose : I told you women. You are not in a honky-tonk. You. Take your blouse now and get out. Get out on the streets where you belong. This is the house of Rosario Delle Rose and I won't have dirty talk in here.
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Serafina Delle Rose : Get up. I'm satisfied.