Two Women

Sophia Loren, in her most celebrated performance, won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in Two Women – the first (and, until Marion Cotillard for 2007’s Ma vie en rose, the only) actress to win that honour for a performance in a foreign-language film. Directed by neorealist master Vittorio De Sica (Bicycle Thieves, Umberto D.), and adapted from a novel by Alberto Moravia, this wartime drama features a deglamourized Loren as Cesira, a young widow and mother who flees Rome with her 13-year-old daughter (Eleonora Brown) during the Allied bombing of the city.  The film charts their arduous trek to Cesira’s native village and back.  A terrible tragedy befalls them along the way. Breathless’ Jean-Paul Belmondo co-stars as a Marxist intellectual. The great Anna Magnani was originally pegged for Loren’s role, with Loren set to play her daughter, but Magnani balked at the arrangement and the script was re-written.  Loren also took Best Actress honours at Cannes. Penélope Cruz’s memorable role as voluptuous Raimunda in Pedro Almodóvar’s Volver was clearly modelled on Loren’s here. B&W, 35mm, in Italian and German with English subtitles. 110 mins.