For some reason it's traditionally been very difficult to get those Sophia Loren/Marcello Mastroianni films from the 60s and 70s in this country. A few months ago Lovefilm added Sunflower and A Special Day and while I took the opportunity to see both it was really the 60s ones I was most interested in. Anyway I finally had enough and decided to download the two most famous ones - Marriage Italian-Style and Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow which seem to be eternally on "reserve" from online rental companies.

I saw Marriage Italian-Style first and the basic set up is that we see Marcello Mastroianni has come to see a very ill Sophia Loren and then we in flashback see how he found her in a whore house years before and took her under his wing. What then unfolds is what the film itself describes as a very old story, it's to do with marriage (or lack of it), family and relationships. Mastroianni is fine in his role as the playboy but this is the Sophia Loren show, she has the role with all the demands and she answers them all quite wonderfully. It's directed by Vittorio De Sica but he does a very subtle job with it and just gets on with the storytelling rather than doing anything excessively showy.

MIS

It's a funny film, the actors handle the dramatic aspects very well (especially Loren), it has a hilarious amount of disrobing (I'm sure the dress comes off at least 3 times in the first 20 minutes), this is essential viewing for anyone who likes Loren and most who like 60s world cinema, it's just such a shame it's a complete bitch to get hold of in the UK. The same sentiment applies in spades to the previous year's Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, which was the one I'd really wanted to see for so long because it is a multi-award winning film (Mastroianni won a BAFTA for it, the film won the oscar for foreign language film, etc.) and it has an extremely famous scene (Sophia's striptease for Marcello).

What I didn't know was that it is a film in 3 segments, with Marcello and Sophia playing different characters in each. The first segment is utterly divine, it's completely adorable and so incredibly ... Mediterranean  - the story is that Loren has been arrested for selling cigarettes but because she's "breeding" she can't be sent to jail until the child is 6 months old, so poor Marcello (oh poor Marcello!) has to repeatedly get her pregnant on order to keep her out of prison. Sophia is an absolute delight as the archetypal nagging wife and Marcello plays her underfed, underslept, overshagged anaemic husband very nicely. In the second segment they play two lovers who've gone out for a drive in Sophia's husband's car, it's the shortest of the three segments and the weakest, but the acting is its subtlest and it is very good in its own right. The final segment sees Loren as a whore who accidentally tempts her neighbour's 17 year old grandson out of becoming a priest and she enlists one of her clients (Mastroianni, who just wants her not to be distracted long enough for him to get what he came for ) to help persuade the lad to carry on with his original plans.

The acting is very good across the board, Marcello is relentlessly funny in the final segment, Sophia is best in the first, which is just perfect in its own little way. De Sica was directing again, but this time it was much more obvious it was a De Sica film, it reminded me a lot in tone of the wonderful Miracle in Milan, he captures the feel of the community in the first segment in such an effortlessly natural way. Overall it's the better film of the two and one I'd recommend unreservedly if it ever becomes available. They really couldn't do much wrong with these two - Mastroianni was just the perfect leading man with looks, charm and talent, Loren being a superb dramatic actress (Two Women being proof if ever it were needed) who was very adept at comedy yet was also stunningly attractive - add to that they had a beautifully natural chemistry together and they were all you could ask in a screen couple. I'll be trying to see a lot more from both (seperately and together) in the future.