Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#38835
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Silvana Mangano represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 77 years in, and Silvana is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Silvana Mangano appears in 10 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Silvana. We Are Cinema is the clearest case: a film rated 9.5 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, quiet performance. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for documentary, tv movie, action. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Kristina Lindström, David Lynch, Luchino Visconti and others, Silvana Mangano helped set a standard other performers now audition against. Awards bodies have been slower than the work, which is usually the sign of a career built on choices rather than campaigns.
We Are Cinema (2021) as Self (archive footage) · The Most Beautiful Boy in the World (2021) as Self (archive footage) (uncredited) · The Great War (1959) as Costantina
Career snapshot
Ranked #38835 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
10
1949–2026
Career length
77 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
9.5
We Are Cinema
Average Nutevio score
6.5
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
9.5
We Are Cinema
Most frequent director
Kristina Lindström
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Kristina Lindström
Most common genre
Drama
5 titles
Average runtime
2h 2m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.0
out of 10
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio metric
Cultural impact and legacy, measured separately from craft — how far the work travelled once it left the cinema.
Nutevio Influence Score
7.1
out of 10
A quieter influence — felt inside the films rather than across the industry.
How far the work travelled past the people who saw it first.
What survives once the release-week conversation has burned off.
Institutional acknowledgement, weighted but never decisive.
Years of chosen, relevant work rather than years merely employed.
Statuettes, read as evidence rather than verdict.
Roles named without needing the film named alongside them.
Directors who wrote parts because this performer existed.
The reading other performers now have to answer.
Actor DNA
A fingerprint derived from the roles themselves — register, range and the kind of film they carry.
The shape of a career
Every performance plotted in time. Hover a point to read the title behind it.
Peak years
Where the scores, the awards and the sheer volume of work agree with each other.
Best decade
1940s
7.0 average MV
The 1940s are where the work and the material meet. Bitter Rice — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1940s
7.0
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1940s
7.5
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1940s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Bitter Rice.
Most productive era
2020s
3 films
The busiest stretch of the catalogue — volume that reads as appetite rather than availability.
Range, mapped
Genres down the side, decades across the top. Warmer cells mean stronger titles.
| Genre | 1940s | 1950s | 1960s | 1970s | 1980s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 7.01 film | 7.41 film | 6.82 films | 6.91 film | — | — |
| Action | — | — | — | — | 6.41 film | — |
| Comedy | — | 7.41 film | — | — | — | — |
| Crime | 7.01 film | — | — | — | — | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1949Bitter Rice
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Silvana.
First Nutevio masterpiece · Highest rated performance · Career peak
2021We Are Cinema
The first film here to clear 9.0 on our scale — a threshold fewer than one film in ten reaches. 9.5 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer. Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
2026Proust Palimpsesto: Pastiches e Misturas
The current state of the argument, as Penelope (archive footage) (uncredited).
Our order
Every performance in the catalogue, ordered by Nutevio Score.
Every title
Filter by genre or decade, and compare any two titles side by side.
10 of 10 films
as Self (archive footage)
Directed by Unknown
as Costantina
Directed by Mario Monicelli
as Silvana
Directed by Giuseppe De Santis
as Self (archive footage) (uncredited)
Directed by Kristina Lindström
as Lucia, the Mother
Directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
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The defining work
#1
Self (archive footage)
We Are Cinema (2021)
Performance score9.1
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Self (archive footage) gives Silvana Mangano a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Costantina
The Great War (1959)
Performance score7.7
The Great War asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Costantina is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Silvana
Bitter Rice (1949)
Performance score7.4
Bitter Rice asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Silvana is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Self (archive footage) (uncredited)
The Most Beautiful Boy in the World (2021)
Performance score7.2
The Most Beautiful Boy in the World asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Self (archive footage) (uncredited) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movieStart here
A guided path through the work, ordered so each film explains the next.
Best entry point
as Self (archive footage)
Start here. We Are Cinema is the clearest statement of what Silvana Mangano does — accessible, 71 minutes, and rated 9.5 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Silvana at the most legible performance, then move forward in time so each film reads as a response to the one before it rather than a repetition of it.
Bitter Rice (1949)
A deliberate change of key after We Are Cinema — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Great War (1959)
Keeps the drama register of Bitter Rice but asks for a colder reading of it.
Theorem (1968)
Keeps the drama register of The Great War but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Most Beautiful Boy in the World (2021)
A deliberate change of key after Theorem — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Giuseppe De Santis
Director
1 film together
Notably Bitter Rice
Mario Camerini
Director
1 film together
Notably Ulysses
Mario Monicelli
Director
1 film together
Notably The Great War
Richard Fleischer
Director
1 film together
Notably Barabbas
Pier Paolo Pasolini
Director
1 film together
Notably Theorem
Luchino Visconti
Director
1 film together
Notably Ludwig
David Lynch
Director
1 film together
Notably Dune
Kristina Lindström
Director
1 film together
Notably The Most Beautiful Boy in the World
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Kristina Lindström
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Most Beautiful Boy in the WorldMario Monicelli
Director
1 film together · 7.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Great WarGiuseppe De Santis
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Bitter RiceLuchino Visconti
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
LudwigPier Paolo Pasolini
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
TheoremRichard Fleischer
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
BarabbasMario Camerini
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
UlyssesDavid Lynch
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
DuneSix degrees
Follow the thread outward — director, film, co-star, and the film after that.
Categories of our own
Six editorial categories we apply to every performer we cover.
Most rewatchable
We Are Cinema
as Self (archive footage)
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Barabbas
as Rachel
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
We Are Cinema
as Self (archive footage)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
We Are Cinema
as Self (archive footage)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
We Are Cinema
as Self (archive footage)
If the career had to be argued in a single scene, our editors would pick one from this film and rest the case.
In their films' words
“You can build a whole film around a performer who knows when not to speak. Silvana Mangano has known it for a long time.”
Head to head
Put two careers on the same scale and see where the argument actually sits.
Ours alone
Recognitions handed out by this desk, on criteria no awards body uses.
Career Achievement
Awarded
77 years of relevant work — not merely a long career, but a long career of choices.
Modern Classic Performer
Awarded
Defining performances delivered inside the last twenty-five years, in films already being taught rather than merely remembered.
Drama Legend
Awarded
5 catalogue titles in drama, each one a reference point for the films that followed.
Our desk
Best ending, best opening, best twist and the rest — categories we apply to everyone we cover.
Best ending
We Are Cinema
as Self (archive footage)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
We Are Cinema
as Self (archive footage)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Barabbas
as Rachel
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Theorem
as Lucia, the Mother
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
We Are Cinema
as Self (archive footage)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Dune
as Reverend Mother Ramallo
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Great War
as Costantina
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Dune
as Reverend Mother Ramallo
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Have your say
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Reference
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