Top 50 Actresses, #23 - Sophia Loren: "Two Women" (1960)

Movie Stats:
Released 1960 (Italy)
Italian & French, in Italian (some German; I watched with English subtitles)
Director - Vittorio de Sica
Stars - Sophia Loren, Eleonora Brown, Jean-Paul Belmondo

Plot Summary:
In WWII Italy, shop owner Cesira (Loren) tries to protect herself & her daughter Rosetta (Brown) from the horrors of war by leaving Rome for the countryside. However, she finds that horror follows them. Belmondo co-stars as Michele, Cesira’s friend/sort-of love interest.

Warnings:
Violence; minor gore; brief female nudity (breast only); heavily implied consensual sex; on-screen, semi-graphic rape.

Bad Stuff:
It’s pretty dull. The pace is slow.

I found it difficult to relate to Cesira. I mean, I understood that her prime motivator was protection of her daughter, but other than that it was hard to gauge what she was thinking and feeling.

I think it’s weird that Rosetta is said to have a heart condition in the opening scene, and yet it was never mentioned again.

Good Stuff:
I thought the themes it explored were intriguing, such as: 1. The naivety/childishness of thinking that one can simply ignore war & not be touched by it and 2. The various forms of danger & harassment women face from men.

Cesira’s reaction to the bad thing that happens toward the end of the film felt very authentic. It made sense to me that a woman of her time period & education level would behave that way, and I admired the film for portraying like that.

I liked that Cesira was a strong, independent woman.

About the Performance:
I thought Loren was good when the scene required a heavy emotion such as fear, grief, or shame. When it required softer or more subtle emotion, she seemed flat. I had no idea what she was thinking. The best example of this is her early scene with Giovanni (Raf Vallone), which played out very differently than I expected because she had no visible or verbal emotional reaction to him until the end of the scene. It was frustrating. I feel like she simultaneously impressed me and disappointed me.

Other performances of Loren’s I’ve reviewed: none.

The Verdict:
It was just okay to me. There’s nothing I can point out that made it terrible, but I can’t say that watching this film was either entertaining or really all that interesting either. It took me forever to write this review because I was completely stumped about what I should say.

I give it 3 stars.