Sophia Loren Award Collection

This four-disc set from Kino Lorber should really be called THE SOPHIA LOREN/MARCELLO MASTROIANNI/VITTORIO DE SICA Award Collection, because the three films in the package feature the work of all three talents.

You might say that Loren and Mastroianni were to the Italian cinema what Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn were to American films, and director De Sica was their George Cukor. When these artists worked together, "movie magic" happened.

YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW (1963) won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. This bright comedy is, in fact, a trilogy, in which Loren and Mastroianni play three different roles.

In the first story, they're a poor couple, who make their living by selling black market cigarettes on the streets of Naples. Sophia is also due to go to prison on a minor fraud charge, but under Italian law, that can't happen if she's pregnant or nursing, so she and Marcello decide to keep her in that condition...indefinitely.

The second, and funniest, story almost entirely takes place on the road in a Rolls Royce. Sophia is the bored, ditzy wife of a wealthy man, who decides to have a fling with a middle class guy (Mastroianni) that she met at a party the previous night. He, however, is a bit wary of her.

The final tale has Sophia playing a high-class prostitute who, not only has to deal with her rich best customer (Mastroianni), but also the young aspiring priest who lives across the way.

MARRIAGE ITALIAN STYLE (1964) earned an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film, and also one for Loren as Best Actress.

Mastroianni plays a successful businessman and Loren is his longtime mistress and confidant. All goes well...until he decides to marry a younger woman, and then ....

Well, you've all heard the saying: "Hell has no fury like a woman scorned," haven't you?

MARRIAGE ITALIAN STYLE is a rich, hilarious comedy.

Unlike the other two movies in this collection, SUNFLOWER (1970) is an epic drama that is reminiscent of Loren and De Sica's earlier collaboration, TWO WOMEN (1960), which won her the Oscar.

Set during and after World War II, the film cast Sophia as an Italian wife, searching for her husband (Mastroianni), reported missing on the Russian battlefields. Her search takes years, but she finally tracks down her spouse...only to discover that he is no longer the man she married.

A bonus disc in this set contains VITTORIO D, a feature-length documentary about De Sica. This film includes interview with Clint Eastwood, Woody Allen, Mike Leigh and others.

All of the films in the collection, available in both DVD and Blu-Ray, are in Italian with English subtitles.

© Michael B. Druxman

Sophia Loren's movie career has spanned seven decades, beginning with "Il Voto" (1950), where she was billed as Sophia Scicolone. She made a number of Italian films under that name as well as Sophia Lazzaro before adopting the name Sophia Loren. Her best-remembered performances display an earthiness and independence that appear to be extensions of her own personality. As time went on, she developed a more glamorous, film goddess persona. She will turn 77 in September, and still is the ultimate movie star.

The four-disc DVD set, "The Sophia Loren Award Collection," contains three features, directed by Vittorio De Sica, that showcase the actress at her best. "Sunflower" (1970) stars Loren as Giovanna, a strong-willed Italian woman on a desperate search to find her husband, Antonio (Marcello Mastroianni), who has gone missing on the World War II battlefields of Russia. Making the grueling overland journey years after the end of the war, she tracks Antonio down and discovers he is not the man she remembers.

"Marriage Italian Style" (1964) received Academy Award nominations for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Actress for Sophia Loren's performance. Marcello Mastroianni one again co-stars, this time as the irrepressibly carnal businessman Domenico, who discovers Loren's Filumena as a young prostitute and keeps her as his mistress and confidante. When he chooses to marry a young cashier instead of her, Filumena is furious, and resorts to a series of wild, comic ruses to win him back.

The best of the collection is "Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow" (1963), winner of the Best Foreign Language Oscar. Set in several Italian locales, the film follows three separate stories featuring Loren and Mastroianni in different roles.
In "Adelina," they are a poor but resourceful Naples couple selling black market cigarettes on the streets. In debt for furniture they bought under Adelina's name, Adelina is threatened with jail, but when she learns that the authorities will not incarcerate a pregnant woman, the pressure is on husband Carmine to make her pregnant, permanently. So the kids start coming one after another until poor Carmine is exhausted.
In "Anna," Loren, costumed in Christian Dior, debates whether she prefers a Rolls Royce or her husband. And in "Mara," Loren plays a prostitute working out of her apartment and Mastroianni plays a wealthy businessman from a notable family who helps Mara set a wavering priest back onto the spiritual plane.

The fourth disc in the set is the 90-minute documentary "Vittorio D," an exploration of the life and legacy of the director and frequent Loren collaborator. Included are interviews with filmmakers Woody Allen, Clint Eastwood, and Mike Leigh.

This is one of the fifteen or so films that have stayed in my mind throughout my life. I first saw the film more than thirty years ago. The acting and plot may be banal. When seen today, the film is distinctly old-fashioned in technique and treatment. However, the film still touches a chord: it deals with a forgotten group of people (Italians captured during WW2), it deals with a wife who believes her lost husband to be still alive, it deals with a situation in which the impersonal forces of history come face-to-face with the reality of individual human beings. The film is an enduring classic, and Sophia Loren's superb Italian humanity still gives the film an everlasting appeal.

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