Film Review
By the mid-1950s, Vittorio De Sica had established himself as one of
Italy's most respected filmmakers, having already pursued a highly
successful career as an actor. A leading figure in the
neo-realist movement, to which he contributed three flawless
masterpieces -
Sciuscià (1946),
Ladri di biciclette (1948) and
Umberto
D. (1952) - De Sica continued to find favour with critics
and audiences well into the 1960s. Coming towards the mid-point
of his busy filmmaking career,
La
Ciociara (a.k.a.
Two Women)
was to be one of his biggest successes, a gritty wartime drama
featuring two charismatic young actors who were destined to become two
of the greatest screen icons of all time, Sophia Loren and Jean-Paul
Belmondo.
Made at a time when the sexual revolution was rapidly gathering
momentum, bringing with it an increasing focus on women's rights and
the role of women in society,
La
Ciociara has an obvious feminist slant to it, which may go
some way to explaining its enormous popularity. Based on a
well-known novel by Alberto Moravia, the film depicts an Italian
widow's attempts to shield her 13-year-old daughter
from the atrocities of war. Superbly portrayed by Sophia Loren
with an uncommon mix of toughness and compassion, the film's heroine
Cesira represents the ideal of motherhood, a woman who lives only to
protect her child. When, in the film's most shocking scene, her
daughter is raped alongside her by Moroccan soldiers (in a Church of
all places), we feel not only the horror of the most brutal of crimes
but also the terrible desolation of a mother who has failed to keep her
child out of harm's way. It is not the rape that burns itself
into our consciousness, but Cesira 's reaction to it upon realising
that the one thing that matters to her has been taken from her and
utterly desecrated.
It was De Sica's earlier film
L'Oro
di Napoli (1954) that had given Sophia Loren her first big
break, leading to a contract with Paramount which made her an
international star. For
La
Ciociara, Loren was originally offered the part of the daughter
but she insisted on playing the far more challenging role of the
mother, even though she was just 25 year old at the time. Under
De Sica's guiding hand, Loren gives a performance unlike any other she
had previously given, the most devastating portrayal of a mother who
tries and fails to protect her daughter from the evils that pervade the
world. Loren's achievement was amply rewarded with a brace of
Best Actress awards, including the award at Cannes in 1961 and an Oscar
the following year (the first time the Best Actress prize had been
given for a performance in a foreign language film). When Sophia
Loren was invited to reprise the part of Cesira in Dino Risi's
television remake in 1989, she accepted willingly - it is hard to think
of another film role in which she appears to invest so much of herself
and conveys such an intensity of feeling.
Jean-Paul Belmondo also benefited from the success of
La Ciociara (particularly in
France, where it attracted an audience of 2 million). After his
success in Jean-Luc Godard's
À bout de souffle
(1959), the actor was struggling to hold on to his easily won stardom,
and his first foray into Italian cinema - Alberto Lattuada's
Lettere di una novizia (1960) -
had been something of a disaster.
La Ciociara provided a badly need
shot in the arm for Belmondo's career and led to more high profiles
roles, in Mauro Bolognini's
La
Viaccia (1961) and Jean-Pierre Melville's
Léon
Morin, prêtre (1961). The part of the
intellectual idealist, a free-spirited individual with a romantic
temperament, could not have suited Belmondo better and, in hindsight,
it appears to have had an important part in the creation of his
likeable screen persona - that eternally juvenile Don Quixote-type who
lives for the moment, as fully and as truthfully as any human being
can.
La Ciociara was
Sophia Loren's film, and it was right that Loren should steal the
lion's share of the acclaim it garnered, but it was also a highly
significant film for her co-star, who was soon to become one of the
biggest names in French cinema.
© James Travers 2013
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Next Vittorio De Sica film:
Il Giudizio universale (1961)
Film Synopsis
In the summer of 1943, Rome is under constant bombardment. A
young widow named Cesira flees the capital with her 13-year-old daughter,
Rosetta, and returns to her home village in the mountainous Ciociaria
region of Italy. In her absence, she asks her neighbour Giovanni
to take over her shop. On their arrival, Cesira makes the
acquaintance of Michele, a free-thinking intellectual who is attracted to
both the mother and her daughter. When the allied forces
arrive, Cesira is forced to return to Rome, but after a long journey
she and her daughter are raped by Moroccan soldiers...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.