I grew up hearing the name Vittorio De Sica. He was a giant in Italian cinema, but I dismissed him as just another popular filmmaker. That was until last week, when I watched his 1970 movie, Sunflower. The movie is annoying in places, and at times seems like an implausible romantic melodrama. Also, it comes across as a showcase for Sophia Loren, who at the time was married to its producer, Carlo Ponti. Despite its shortcomings, Sunflower left an impression on me, so much so that I looked up other De Sica films. Then I discovered what a truly great filmmaker this director/producer was.
Vittorio De Sica's greatest films were made right after WWII, which ended in 1945. The films were raw, difficult to watch because of their emotional impact. Sunflower is not that. Made twenty-five years after the war ended, this movie is essentially a love story with war as a backdrop.
In his early post-WWII films, De Sica laid the foundation for a movement known as Italian neorealism. Neorealism was a response by De Sica and other filmmakers to post-World War II Italy. The filmmakers were working in a country that had been physically devastated by the war.
Naples, 1944, public domain photo by Maria Napoli
No institutional film industry existed, so movies were made with the material at hand. Cameras in streets. Impoverished people, non-actors, populated the scene. The result was ground-breaking and brilliant.
By the time Sunflower was made, in 1970, the film industry had returned to Italy. This movie has a polished look. Even though the first scene takes place right after the war ended, the streets are clean. People are well fed, well dressed.
The female lead, Giovanna, played by Sophia Loren, is in distress but she is not hungry, not struggling to pay her rent or find employment. She is upset because her husband, Antonio, played by Marcello Mastroianni, has not returned from the war, and yet she has not been told if he is alive or dead.
The government cannot tell Giovanna the status of her husband, so she decides to go find him on her own. This quest takes her to the Soviet Union, where he had been sent to fight.
The movie is an obvious showcase for Sophia Loren, and the camera does linger on her face and body longer than it might have if another actor had been in that role. She acquits herself well enough in most scenes, but I have seen roles in which she was more effective.
The best scenes in the movie are shot in the Soviet Union. The movie was a rare collaboration at the time between Western filmmakers and the Soviet Union. It is in the Soviet scenes that De Sica reverts to his neorealist technique. While I found these more artistically successful than the rest of the movie, Sophia Loren was not a good fit as she traipsed around a vast graveyard where fallen soldiers were buried.
Giovanna does find her husband in the Soviet Union. He has married a Russian woman and has had a child with her. He has started a new life.
Giovanna Discovers Her Husband Has Found a New Love
This development is consistent with De Sica's earlier war-themed movies. War disrupts. War destroys. Here, though, there is a less brutal expression of war's cruelty than in the early classics.
Do Giovanna and Antonio end up together? What happens to the Russian wife and child? These are questions that will not be answered in this blog. You'll have to watch the movie to find out. Should you watch it? I think so, but don't expect too much. Don't expect too much from the script, or the actors.
The film is entertaining and a worthy watch, mostly, I believe, because it is an introduction to De Sica--if his work is unfamiliar to you. After watching this, it would be a good idea to move on to Bicycle Thieves. This masterpiece is considered to be one of the greatest movies ever made. Also, view Umberto D. This film ranks, again, among the best and most influential movies in cinema history.
WWII and Italian Cinema
Clip of Benito Mussolini in Milan, 1934
Vittorio De Sica once said, "We are all guilty". To understand what he meant by that, and to place the statement in the context of his war-themed films, we have to know something about Italy's role in WWII.Italian leader Benito Mussolini, in 1925, declared that democratic liberalism was dead in Italy and the country was a fascist state. After that Italy was in thrall to this man some historians regard as a narcissistic sociopath. Many Italians, perhaps, did not see Mussolini for what he was. Vittorio De Sica stated in a New York Times article:
I personally did not take Mussolini seriously in the beginning. He was too much like a clown. It was only after he declared war that I took him seriously, and then it was too late.
It might be said that, in a way, the Italian people enabled Mussolini, as did De Sica. The leader was very popular, particularly with the industrialists and the ruling class. When Italy finally allied with Germany and entered the war on Germany's side, it was the Italian people who paid the price.
They rethought their decision midway through the war, staged a coup and arrested Mussolini. However, the Germans rescued him and established a puppet state in northern Italy. As the Germans withdrew from Italy they were determined to leave nothing behind. They bombed everything in sight. Not only did the Italians suffer bombing campaigns from the Allies before German withdrawal, but they also suffered devastating losses as German forces left.
The Italian economy was shattered at the end of the war. The clip below gives a hint of what life was like for a common worker at that time:
In Sunflower you see no hint of Italy's wartime destruction. It looks like everybody that wants a job, has a job. The toll from war is reckoned by the missing and the dead.
Are there outstanding performances in this movie? Yes, I think so. Some minor actors acquit themselves more effectively than the marquis stars. Glauco Onorato, for example, who is known simply as the Returning Soldier, is memorable in his role as he leaves Antonio behind in the snow.
***Trivia: Official persecution of Jews began in 1938 under Mussolini--two years before war was declared. Forced deportations followed, starting in 1940.
It is estimated that 115,000 Italian soldiers died fighting in the Soviet Union during the war.
Vittorio De Sica was not a Fascist. Before and during the war he was a movie star. As a matter of fact he starred in more movies than he ever directed.
I hope in future weeks to review some of De Sica's better films.
I watched this on Kino Lorber, which is a subscription I hold on Amazon Prime Video.
Thank you for reading my blog. Peace, and health to all.
Rating: 75/100
