Pane, amore e.....

I remembered seeing it on Italian TV as a child and even then I liked it, seeing it again yesterday, I thought it wouldn't resist the test of time, instead, I throughly enjoyed it.... for all the qualities you don't see in films nowadays, (especially in modern Italian films).

Briefly, a tale of a cultivated(Vittorio de Sica), educated, charming middle-aged womanizing, newly installed chief of the traffic police (complete with resplendid uniform including white gloves), whom on arriving at his long lost native Sorrento , finds his family home occupied/squatted by a beautiful fishmonger (sofia Loren, at her most splendid).While starting procedures of evicting her he also starts courting her, with poetic citations, charming one liners and complements, inducing the jealousy of her semi - boyfriend/suitor.Complicating matters further, the haunty, aloof but good looking noble woman owner of the house where Vittorio is temporarily living , falls for Vittorio.But all this happens in a semi comic and humorous vein...after all it's a romantic comedy. The film ends with a typical happy ending...but the whole film is held up by the old world charms of Vittorio de Sica....Sofia loren acted well too.

I sometimes wonder if its possible nowadays to make a remake of this film, ....but sometimes I feel it wouldn't work....no female nudity,no profanitites, no sex, and no vulgarities...while I feel I'm in a minority in appreciating good taste, it seems not so with, modern day film or/and TV producers who always want to 'modernize' their 'art' with the aforementioned charateristics. A real pity,... perhaps a new film style could be a return to class and good taste.

I came to this film 65 years after it was made. Sophia Loren is a phenomenon, and if you watch "The Life Ahead" before you watch this, her extraordinary contribution to world cinema is even more apparent. This is Italy less than a decade after the end of World War II, yet the film is apolitical and concentrates on the lives of real people trying to make their way in a nation that suffered enormously from war but also from its own delusions and acquiescence to the "charms" of fascism.

This kind of reminded me of the Greek love dramas I used to watch when I was younger. Though I don't remember the age gaps, which surely must have existed in many of those movies too. It was all about love. In this case that's not entirely true. Esepecially for the female main character in this. Sophia Loren had a reputation as a person, which one cannot seem to be able to distinguish from some of her roles.

What can she do though? She had the looks, it's not like she isn't or wasn't able to play anything else. Which I think she's proving even now in a recent production on Netflix. I haven't seen that one yet, but just from some flashes of the trailer one can tell, she has not lost her touch. And speaking of which, her touch is something two men crave here. One older, the other one younger. With all the teasing and all the other stuff happening too. A drama that will touch some and will others indifferent. But you can't blame the movie for not keeping it real amongst all the fun it has ...

Vittorio de Sica is retiring from the Caribinieri, returning to Sorrento to become head of the Police Department. He comes equipped with an elderly governess, a brother who is a priest, and a great variety of uniforms, all with white gloves. What he lacks is a place to live. His family apartment has been occupied since the War by Sophia Loren, a widowed fishwife. She has a boyfriend with whom she fights a lot. This does not, of course, prevent her from coming on to de Sica, who easily loses his head over women -- it's Loren, who wouldn't? -- to keep the apartment and get her boyfriend a job with the police. The boyfriend objects to her methods. Meanwhile, de Sica is staying at the home of Lea Padovani, a highly religious and insanely repressed woman, as a favor to the priest.

I have the feeling that the movie's length of 110 minutes, although long for a comedy, is trimmed. Miss Padovani's sequences seem rather abrupt and Miss Loren, while startlingly beautiful, gives a performance that is rather harsh and monotonous; it's true she was only 20 when she made this, but she soon showed herself a capable farceur and actress of considerably greater range. Perhaps the producer and director simply lacked confidence in her abilities.

Despite these misgivings, this is a good comedy, mostly because of de Sica, who plays his well-written role of a mature and intelligent man who becomes a gibbering poet at the sight of a beautiful woman, with the beautiful freedom of a true clown.

Enjoy it for the colorful scenery and De Sica as the aging lady's man.