Powerful affecting drama which earned Sophia Loren an Oscar, and deservedly so, because she's captivating - imperious, gorgeous, tormented, warm, funny, harrowed, loving. It's a fantastic part (at its heart this film is a good old fashioned star vehicle).
The story is simple: Loren and her daughter get sick of being bombed in 1943 Rome so they head home. Loren has a sort of romance with an intellectual (Jean Paul Belmondo). The Allies come. She and her daughter are raped by Moroccan soldiers. The boyfriend is killed.
It's very effective, understated on the most part.I kept thinking of the Russian movie Burnt by the Sun - like that this is a rural piece with the violence more alluded to in bursts (the opening bombing, a plane strafes them along the road killing a man, running into pro Mussolini guerillas) building to the shock finale where Loren and her daughter are raped.
Belmondo is effective cast against type. Eleonara Brown is pretty good as the girl. Raf Vallone's part feels tacked on (he's a guy Loren sleeps with at the beginning), although I guess he has uses exposition wise. But it's Loren's film.
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