The Rose Tattoo (1955)

Burt Lancaster: Alvaro Mangiacavallo

Photos 

Quotes 

• Alvaro Mangiacavallo : Rose?

  Serafina Delle Rose : How do you know my name?

  Alvaro Mangiacavallo : What other name could it be?

• 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.

• Alvaro Mangiacavallo : I got a big load of bananas in my truck.

• Alvaro Mangiacavallo : I would like to wash up, because I think maybe I smell like a goat, you know?

• Alvaro Mangiacavallo : You had three very sweet things: heart, face, and figure.

• Alvaro Mangiacavallo : You know, Mangiacavallo means "eat a horse". You know this. But I don't have a horse to eat, not even a chicken.

• 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.

• Alvaro Mangiacavallo : Love and affection is what I got to offer on hot or cold days in this lonely old world. I got nothing else. Mangiacavallo has nothing.

• Alvaro Mangiacavallo : May I have your number? My number is 6-6-9-9.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• Alvaro Mangiacavallo : Baronessa, I'm a healthy young man. Hey, I exist without no genuine love life. I look at them pictures in the magazines - them girls in the advertisements, you know what I mean. They got a little bitty thing here, a little bitty thing there. That's all they need, they're so skinny!

• 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.

• 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?

• Alvaro Mangiacavallo : Did he have a tattoo?

  Serafina Delle Rose : Did who have a what?

• 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?

• 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.

• 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.

• 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?

• 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.

• 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!

• Alvaro Mangiacavallo : You turned out the lights.

  Serafina Delle Rose : Well, the - the moon is enough.

• 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.