Hier, aujourd'hui et demain

These three stories very "Italian" indeed, are full of good humour, social observation and correct atmosphere. The direction of De Sica is superb, the acting of Mastroianni and Loren is unique and in the second and third stories we recognize the subtle and superior hand of their author, the great Zavattini. The first story takes place in a very typical popular neighbourhood of Naples where a cigarette pedlar and smuggler (Sofia Loren) discovers that the way of not going to jail for failing to pay a fine, is to get pregnant over and over and giving birth to one child after another with the problems this brings to her exhausted husband (Mastroianni). The second story shows us an aristocratic Milanese rich lady who to escape her boring life gets herself a lover on a social stratum lower to hers and finishes by valuing her Rolls Royce car more than her lover. This is perhaps the not so good of the three stories because it lacks some strength in terms of plot. Finally the third story (maybe the best of the three) is sometimes delirious and hallucinating in its very funny rhythm (Loren's acting is fabulous here) and tells us about a luxury prostitute living near the Piazza Navona in Rome who nevertheless has a soft heart and with whom a neighbour young seminarist falls in love while she plays a game of pull and let go with one of her clients who is anxious to take her to bed most unsuccessfully. This story has a surprising end and a fascinating scene of strip-tease (incomplete of course). You'll have a very amusing time watching this movie.

Italian anthology comedy starring Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni. It's often cited as one of the best films of both stars. There are three stories involving different couples, each played by Loren and Mastroianni. The first has Sophia as a wife who keeps getting pregnant to avoid a jail sentence. It's an amusing story, although it goes on a little long. The second story is about a rich married woman taking a drive with her lover. The segment is pretty dull as it builds up to its punchline. But I suppose that was the point, to make you thing this was an inane soap opera story about whether this woman will choose fortune or love. The question is answered humorously enough but this is still the weakest story in the film. The third story, and the one for which the movie is probably most famous, has Sophia playing a prostitute. Her neighbor's grandson, about to become a priest, falls for Sophia and she must try to set him back on the right path. But, in doing so, she makes a vow that frustrates lustful client Marcello. Sophia's never looked sexier than here and her striptease is legendary.

Of the three stories, the last is the most entertaining but none are bad. Sophia is beautiful and enchanting. She and Marcello are both fun in every segment. It's an enjoyable film, though probably much more so if you are a big fan of Italian cinema to begin with.

This very enjoyable film may be a let down for someone expecting the heights of De Sica's Neorealist masterpieces like The Bicycle Thief or Two Women. However it is very funny in parts and is pointedly critical of Italian society in the boom years of the 1960s. Also Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni are absolutely stunning to watch.

For people interested in Italy it is a fascinating commentary on the country that can border on stereotype. Naples (De Sica's hometown) is warm and happy and filled with clever types ready to outwit the system and find their own way to happiness. Milan is cold, rich, and callous. Rome is dominated by the Catholic church and the State with plenty of hypocrisy and corruption. But De Sica finds some humor in all of this.

I found it a little too sentimental but well worth watching. I wish a better (undubbed) print were available. De Sica's career was given a boost by the success of the movie and he would continue to make more great films like The Garden of the Finzi-Contini's and the underrated A Brief Vacation that focus on the injustices of the State and the hardships faced by working people.

Two great performers of the Italian screen, Marcello Mastroianni and Sophia Loren, star in this earthy three-episode film, directed by Vittorio De Sica and tailor-made for the two stars. The success of this film led to the making of MARRIAGE, Italian STYLE a year later. In the first of the three comic vignettes Sophia is a black marketeer in Naples who discovers that a pregnant woman cannot be put in jail and so tries to maintain perpetual pregnancy. Poor fatigued husband Mastroianni is barely up to the task, however, and this fact provides much of the humor. The middle episode, the least effective, has Loren as a Milanese rich-bitch of liberal attitudes but who likes to plow into other people's cars. In the last episode Sophia is a Roman prostitute, Mastroianni is her sex-crazed customer. Part of the story is about how she unwittingly almost destroys the vocation of a seminarian living in an apartment across the terrace. Seminarians, surrender!

Addendum: in 2005 a new DVD release in letterbox format allows us to see the movie in its original wide-screen CinemaScope ratio. It has the original Italian language version with an English-tract option and a subtitle option.

1963's "Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow" was, like the previous year's "Boccaccio 70," another anthology feature, this time featuring Sophia Loren with her most frequent leading man, Marcello Mastroianni, starring in all three stories for director Vittorio De Sica. In "Adelina" they are a married couple living in a poverty stricken section of Naples, where she must dodge arrest for nonpayment on furniture by way of pregnancy; "Anna" finds her a bored socialite wed to an often absent industrialist who ultimately chooses wealth over love to Mastroianni's disappointment; and in "Mara" she plays a high priced call girl who vows to spend a week without sex to convince the young man next door to follow the call of the priesthood. Her final reel striptease remains the stuff of legend but is quite tame today, the actress considering it a most pleasing, natural performance. As a 1963 Oscar winner as Best Foreign Film it was a huge success, with both stars reuniting with De Sica for their next picture, "Marriage Italian Style."