Mama Mia! Loren deservedly won a Best Actress Oscar--the first to a non-American actress in a foreign-language film--for this Vittorio De Sica film, adapted by screenwriter Cesare Zavattini from an Alberto Moravia novel. It's not a great De Sica-Zavattini collaboration; much of the movie
suffers from poor pacing and listlessness, but Loren is a marvel to behold.
She plays Cesira, a young widow in 1943 Italy who leaves her grocery store in San Lorenzo in the hands of her sometime lover (Raf Vallone), fleeing Allied bombing with her teenage daughter, Rosetta (Eleanora Brown), to return to her native village. There, after an arduous journey, she meets
Michele (Jea...
Released:
1960
Rated:
NR
Length:
105 mins