Sonnenblumen

"I Girasoli" is certainly one of the best romantic stories in an honest and pure setting in Italy and Russia. It is a dramatic love story of Antonio and Giovana wanting to stay together in the war. The impossibility to hold on to the newly found and sweetest happiness becomes inevitable in the destructive war, where Anoinio is found half frozen by a Russian woman. The accent lies in finding love in warm sunny Italy and loosing this in the freezing cold war thousands of miles away. Although in this new other world there is love too, it is never the same as before. At the end the search for the lost love is completed and in vain when life has changed there lives irreversibly. Un impossibile ritorno al passato.

I just finished watching the stunning Blu Ray of the original Italian English-subtitled version of this film--the best version available. I do not understand all the naysayers reviewing this film. If you are a fan of Loren and Mastroianni, if you are a fan of DeSica, if you enjoy a good old-fashioned melodrama that will tear at your heart, you MUST see this film! To dismiss this film as Soviet propaganda, or as unrealistic, is like criticizing "The Little Mermaid" for having a singing mermaid and talking fish. It utterly misses the point. This movie contains one of the very best, if not THE best Sophia Loren performance on film. Henri Mancini's score is unforgettable. This film makes you care about the plight of both characters. It is available as part of the new "Sophia Loren Collection" box set, and for me, this, along with "Marriage Italian Style," is the "jewel" of the set. See it!

Vittorio de Sica achieved a remarkable feat in this eye-catching 1970 production, bringing together Americans and Soviets, in the midst of the Cold War, in the co-production of a Franco-Italian film.

From the Americans he got a memorable soundtrack, written and directed by Henry Mancini and nominated for an Oscar. From the Soviets he received the footage from Mosfilm, directed by Andrey Konchalovskiy, as well as the actress Ludmila Saveleva.

The script by Tonino Guerra and Cesare Zavattini has everything it needs to work, but the film gets lost somewhere in between so many attributes.

The story is basic and excessively melodramatic. The soundtrack is beautiful but quickly becomes cloying. The footage of the sunflower fields and the cemeteries of Russian combatants is powerful and eloquent, but inconsequential. This is, after all, a story of the living, not the dead. Only the final notes of the fatalism of war, which determines people's fates, far beyond their individual will, remain to give the film any meaning.

But it is not enough. A final result clearly less than the sum of its parts.

meeting between two great actors and an impressive director. images from Italy and picture of Russia in the air of Cold War.a basic story about a couple, a war and a choice. a travel and the form of truth. beautiful music and force of unspoken words. that is all. or only gentle performance of Ludmila Savelieva. a great film. not for cast or dramatic slices, for the force of emotions or for the sunflower as vegetable testimonies about a tragedy. but only for its virtue to be a seed. a seed of questions and answers. an exercise of empathy. a sad love story in which love is more than feeling. a poem but just a very special poem. mixture of pure joy, shadows of war, a miracle and a search, it is homage to a sacrifice generation and reflection of deep need of sense in a chaotic world. nothing pink, nothing cold. only picture of a man, a young Russian woman who speaks Italian, a charming Sophia Loren and same Mastroianni. but the essence is possession of public.

You know the plot.

Sunflower was Vittorio De Sica's last film. It was dismissed by the critics as hopelessly maudlin melodrama. But anyone who cares enough to be reading this no doubt knows the humanity he crafted into every frame, and the beauty and sadness of life it evokes.

Henry Mancini's theme song is, IMVHO, the very best he ever wrote. I'm reduced to tears every time I hear it. Yet it seems Mancini himself treated as a lesser child. His daughter recorded it to lyrics better left forgotten.