La Ciociara (1960)

Directed by Vittorio De Sica. Starring Sophia Loren, Eleonora Brown, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Raf Vallone, Carlo Ninchi, Andrea Checchi, Pupella Cealti.

The outrage and suffering of war, not as experienced by soldiers in battle but by a widowed mother and her daughter fleeing Rome to the countryside during World War II. De Sica’s neo-realist style is threatened by the poignant manipulation of melodrama—powerful as it might be, the loss of innocence theme couldn’t be rendered more literally in this case—but despite a tendency to dissipate dramatic tension and emotional resonance in the scenes leading up to that fateful horror, the story is simply and beautifully realized. When Loren won the Best Actress Oscar, the picture became the first foreign-language film to earn an Academy Award for acting. Although Brown (as the daughter) is more inconsistent and hesitant overall, her facial contortions and shell-shocked hollowness toward the end leave their mark. Adapted by Cesare Zavattini and an unbilled De Sica from Alberto Moravia’s same-named novel. The film was released in English-language markets as Two Women.

79/100