Sophia Loren

(On Cable TV, February 2022) It’s interesting to see actresses known for their sex-appeal decide to commit to a heavy dramatic part in an equally serious film—and that’s even more interesting in Sophia Loren’s case is that she was barely 25 at the time she shot Two Women, and took time away from her rocketing Hollywood career to go back to Italy and director Vittorio De Sica for a gritty, unsentimental, hard-to-watch film of a mother and daughter trying to survive during wartime. Considering that much of the film revolves around the aftermath of their gang rape and then, later, the death of one of the main characters, it’s clear that this isn’t a film that plays well to mainstream audiences. Shot in stark black and white, it’s filled with cold compromises between virtue and survival, with the mother trying to protect her daughter against the worst of it. In the war movie pantheon, it comes about ten years earlier than comparable American films, clearly belonging to the war-is-hell camp long before the mainstream followed. For Loren, the gamble paid off—her role earned her an Academy Award (the first Oscar for a non-English role) among many, many other honours. Perhaps more crucially, it also proved to everyone that she could be more than a sex-symbol at an important juncture in her career. Without it, maybe her career wouldn’t have lasted as long. No wonder other actresses remain eager to try something similar.