La chance d'être femme

Marcello Mastroianni catches a picture of Sophia Loren adjusting her stockings and sells it to the girly magazines. Soon, she and her low-pressure fiance/lawyer are threatening the magazine and Mastroianni, but Loren dumps him. In return for not suing him, she'll accept his services in gaining a career. She's open-minded about what: model, movie star, wife of an industrialist, it's all one to her. But after an evening of passion, she begins her rise, first to agent/count Charles Boyer, then onto movie producers. Where will it end?

Alessandro Blasetti's high-speed comedy capitalizing on Signorina Loren's legs and the chemistry between her and Mastroianni -- this was their third movie -- is definitely a screwball, and while its pace of gags keeps it funny, it also shows one of the prime problems with screwball; in this one, everyone is a rotter, looking out for money and sex, since class, while mentioned, never appears; just occasional bouts of self-serving good manners. Still, you can see the seeds of what would become LA DOLCE VITA, with the paparazzi already cynically hard at work.

This is great Italian comedy at the peak of its screwball virtuosity, with Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni in their third film together with Charles Boyer for an extra touch. The conversation is furious all through like constant crossfire, seldom has so much been spoken in greater haste in only one hour and a half, which sees Sophia advance from an innocent aid to almost a top film star, just because the equally innocent and simple photographer Marcello Mastroianni happened to take a picture of her just passing by in a golden moment, which ended up as a magazine cover causing a sensation, with a long train of complications ahead, including court proceedings. Naturally the incorrigible girl hunter and count Charles Boyer gets interested and almost gives her his wife's fur coat, but you can't have everything. Marcello is after all more in her own age and has some advantage of his experience of intrigue as a journalist photographer. It's a delightful comedy but very superficial, there is no cinematography here, only bang on with flashing talk all through, but if you can follow you will be tremendously entertained.

In the world of film 'It' plus 'It' equals 'Chemistry' and that between Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni was palpable in their first outing 'Too bad she's bad' directed by Alessandro Blasetti. Here they are in their third film together and Blasetti again directs. La Loren is still very much capitalising on her pneumatic physique and sexual charisma but of course one has to play the game with the cards one is dealt! Both she and Mastroianni show even greater assurance in their scenes together which augurs well for the future. There is the added bonus of the consummate Charles Boyer as a Lothario who likes to dine 'a la carte' as it were, despite having a delicious set menu at home in the person of Elisa Cegani as his wife. She comes into her own in a priceless scene towards the end. The film is well paced, looks marvellous and the script by D'Amico and Flaiano sparkles. Alessandro Cicognini is again on hand with a typically breezy score. Great to see Boyer in action although he has not alas been 'dubbed' very well. Especially good to see the Loren/Mastroianni partnership go from strength to strength with of course their greatest films to come.

LUCKY TO BE A WOMAN was the third film that featured Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni together. It is a breezy, inconsequential, but likeable comedy about a photographer, Corrado, played by Mastroianni, who snaps a picture of a Rome beauty, Antonietta, played by Loren. The photo, much to Antonietta's surprise, winds up on the front page of a magazine. She wants to sue! At the instigation of Corrado the girl allows herself to be courted by the Count Senetti, whose specialty is launching cinema careers of potential female stars and sleeping with them. The lewd count takes a sexual interest in Loren. It is dashed by the sudden appearance on the scene of the count's legitimate wife (played by the long-time Blasetti favorite Elisa Cegani.) The movie's most delicious scene is when at a restaurant table with her cheating husband and Antonietta, the wife orders a salad, complete with Worcestershire and raw egg, only to launch the concoction into her lecherous husband's face. She steals the show. Throughout it all, Loren and Mastroianni, though constantly sparring, nurture a thinly concealed love for each other, which leads to the inevitable "bacio and abbraccio" and promise of a marriage by the time the film ends. This movie followed on the heels of Blasetti's very popular TOO BAD SHE'S BAD, made a year earlier.