TODAY AND TOMORROW YESTERDAY Movie Review

leri, Oggi e Domani
She Got What She Asked For

Of the many multiple-story films that came out of Italy in the 1960s, Vittorio De Sica's Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow was both the best and the most popular. In “Adelina,” Sophia Loren makes a shady living on the black market in Naples. When she makes the happy discovery that Italian law prohibits pregnant women from being jailed, she cajoles husband Marcello Mastroianni into keeping her perpetually pregnant (the episode takes place over seven years). In “Anna,” Loren is a rich woman who tells her young, starving-artist lover that she cares only for love and passion, and that her money means nothing to her. Clue: she doesn't mean it. The third and most well remembered of the pieces, “Mara,” features Loren as a call-girl who tries to dissuade a young seminary student from giving up the church for her. She does it by taking a week-long vow of chastity, the end of which culminates in the now-legendary strip-tease that Loren does for her favorite client, Mastroianni (the two actors reprised the scene in Robert Altman's Ready to Wear.) If you're looking for the De Sica of The Bicycle Thief or Umberto D., you'll be disappointed. Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow finds the great director in a very different, far more easygoing mode. These pleasant sketches are light, enjoyable, diverting fun, and that's all they're meant to be. De Sica is completely at the service of his actors here, and the undemanding material lets Loren and Mastroianni ham it up so pleasurably that you leave the theatre feeling positively stuffed with mortadella.

NEXT STOP … Boccaccio ‘70, Marriage Italian Style, Woman Times Seven

1964 119m/C IT FR Sophia Loren, Marcello Mastroianni, Tony Pica, Giovanni Ridolfi; D: Vittorio De Sica. Academy Awards ‘64: Best Foreign Film; British Academy Awards ‘64: Best Actor (Mastroianni). VHS JEF, HHE