Neo-realist consciousness - Visconti’s later film Bellissimafeatures Anna Magnani as a domineering working class mother determined to turn her five-year-old daughter into a film star. Visconti uses the narrative as a platform both to bitterly criticize the superficiality and moral indifference of the mainstream film industry, and to concentrate attention on the frail innocence of underprivileged children, as was pretty much standard for filmmakers associated with the movement. The result is an odd hybrid between Neo-realist conventions and women’s genre films, which is not entirely unsuccessful, but is hurt mainly by a series of odd and jarring tonal shifts, and a reluctance to commit to being either a stylized human comedy or a sober reflection on the falsity of escapist entertainment.