A Legendary Pair in a Trio of Tales

Film is full of famous duos: Laurel and Hardy, Tracy and Hepburn, Bogie and Bacall. Each pair of names conjuring recognizably distinct personalities (usually opposites that compliment one another) and memorable cinematic moments specific to their unique chemistry together. But when Sophia Loren was coupled up with Marcello Mastroianni in the 1954 Italian comedy Too Bad She's Bad it was the beginning of an on-screen relationship that would span half a century in over a dozen films making the couple the most recognizable faces of Italian film. Both achieved international fame and recognition individually. Loren was the first actress to win an Oscar for a foreign language performance with 1961's Two Women and Mastroianni has more Oscar nominations for foreign language performances (3 Best Actor nominations: 1962's Divorce Italian Style, 1977's A Special Day, and 1987's Dark Eyes) than any other performer. But the two worked best when they were together, especially loving and fighting in the Italian sex comedies that brought them to the attention of audiences. 

And perhaps their most iconic cinematic moment occurred in this week's film for Hit Me With Your Best Shot from Nathaniel at The Film Experience, Vittorio De Sica's triptych Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language film Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. You better believe my best shot comes from that scene, which we'll get to soon enough (not to tease you, but you'll know it when you see it - even if you've never seen the film). Because the film is broken up into 3 stories, each set in a different Italian city, there are actually 3 Best Shots this week. And that famous scene isn't even in the best section of the film! That distinction belongs to the film's first section about Adelina of Naples.

When things are broken up into multiple parts, there's always gonna be ones that stand out more than the others. At almost an hour, "Adelina" is longer and more interesting than either of the other 2 stories in the film that I wish they had just added 30 minutes or so and made the film all about this. (But then we would've missed out on the film's famous last scene, which I would not be okay with.) The first story in the film is about a perpetually unemployed husband and a wife that sells cigarettes on the blackmarket. To avoid serving time in jail, she is eternally pregnant thanks to a law that prevents her from being arrested if she's nursing or with child. 

The shot I've chosen as my Best from this section shows Loren's Adelina along the steps of Naples, where she appears everyday to sell her illegal wares. Usually surrounded by the other women that work in her profession, they have all scattered to the wind when it's announced that the police are on their way. All leave expect Adelina. A sole figure, standing her ground and taunting the officers with her Get Out of Jail Free card:

     

There is very little in life that Adelina has control over. She and her family are virtually penniless. She must work to feed her growing brood, otherwise they starve. But in this moment with her head held high, cradling her child against her bosom - she has the power. And she relishes every moment of it.

In the film's second (and least successful) part, Loren plays Anna of Milan, a wealthy woman in a loveless marriage with a powerful man (his name is literally on ever billboard in the city, proclaiming his importance). She begins a fling with another man, out of boredom more than spite, who she picks up to go for a drive in her Rolls-Royce. Unlike Adelina who fights for and savors her small position of power, Anna, decked out in expensive furs and Christian Dior, takes all she has for granted. She tells her lover Renzo there is a profound emptiness inside her and for a brief minute the shallow woman becomes contemplative:

  

It's the only instance of the story where Anna becomes anything close to being sympathetic. After Renzo accidentally crashes her car, she reveals her true feelings. There is an emptiness inside her, but it is of her own making. Her greed and superficial cares have made her dead inside. What I love in this instance is that Renzo reaches his hand out to her as if trying to save her, but the cold look on her face and steadfast gaze in the distance shows that she's too far away to ever be saved by anyone - least of all him. 

Which brings us to the last segment of the film in which Loren plays Mara of Rome, a high-class call girl that begins a flirtatious, but innocent  relationship with her young neighbor, a priest in seminary school. Unaware of her profession, the boy becomes infatuated with her. But when his grandmother denounces the harlot in front of him, he spurns his family and refuses to continue his priestly studies. Mara, feeling guilty about the ensuing events, vows to light candles and remain celibate until the young man returns to school. Which makes it all very difficult for her main client. Luckily she's not above giving a little taste, which brings us to the film's climax and most famous moment. The Striptease:

I almost went with a single shot of Loren, when she turns around with a shocked look after almost taking off her bra - remembered what she promised. But decided that a two shot of the famous actors was much more fitting. And I realized that I had created my own tease in revealing Mastroianni in my procession of shots. Nowhere to be seen in "Adelina", the hint of a hand in "Anna" and finally the big reveal: Loren and Mastroianni together at last. And the scene is the best of the entire film - there's a reason it's so well remembered. Loren scorching hot, every inch the sex symbol she is, seductively rolls down her stocking while giving Mastroianni a come-hither look. But the best part is the juxtaposition of Loren's very adult-like pose with Mastroianni's child-like one. His face resting in his hands, as eager and excited as a young boy seeing a pair of boobs for the very first time! The scene is so famous that years later when the two co-stars appeared in Robert Altman's Pret-a-Porter, they recreated the striptease, but this time Mastroianni falls asleep before Loren can even finish. Able to poke fun of the legend that had built around them over the decades, Loren and Mastroianni's chemistry, like all of film's great duos, is as apparent then as it was in Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. 

These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

Back in December 2013 when NBC aired their live version of The Sound of Music, Carrie Underwood took to Twitter the next day to address all her detractors regarding her performance by simply responding: "Plain and simple: Mean people need Jesus. They will be in my prayers tonight..." It's the kind of response you'd expect from someone that just played a nun in training. But The Sound of Music has always had its haters. With a cast of singing adorable moppets, the spunkiest bunch of nuns this side of Sister Act, and songs about the gastronomic glory of schnitzel with noodles, there was always a danger that the sugary-sweet, goody two-shoes-ness of it all can end up making you feel queasy from all its cloying saccharine. The film's own star Christopher Plummer for years afterward would denounce the film calling it affectionately "The Sound of Mucus." But on the 50th Anniversary of the Best Picture winner, I'm here, like Miss Underwood, to tell all the mean people that don't like it to bugger off. Because, quite simply, the 1965 film version of The Sound of Music is glorious perfection.

From Julie Andrews twirling on a mountaintop to the lump that forms in my throat every time Plummer's Captain von Trapp can't finished "Edelweiss" and the entire concert hall joins him, there is not a single frame or moment that doesn't fill me with warmth and nostalgia. Perhaps because it has been engrained into me since I was a child. I watched it every year when it aired on television (I distinctly remember it at Easter time, but it has somehow shifted to Christmas) and there hasn't been a year that's gone by since I was about 6 or 7 years old that I haven't watched The Sound of Music at least once. To celebrate the film's golden anniversary and the return of Hit Me With Your Best Shot from Nathaniel at The Film Experience, I'm highlighting some of my favorite things about the film. So let's start at the very beginning...

• It's all based on a true story

Well, like everything there's certain liberties taken with the story. Maria had actually been brought to the von Trapp home to only be a governess to one of the children. She only later looked after all of them. There were actually 7 von Trapp children but there were actually 3 boys and one girl - all have different names in the movie. The real children are Rupert, Agathe, Maria, Werner, Hedwig, Johanna, and Martina. In her autobiography, Maria says that she never really loved the Captain and that she honestly wanted to be a nun. But she loved the children and married him for them. (Not quite as romantic as the film, but I guess there's no way to write a ballad about marrying a man for his children.) But the best reminder that the musical and film are about a real woman named Maria von Trapp is that she actually appears in the film with one of the three children she had with Georg, Rosmarie, and her step-grandchild, Barbara (whose father was Werner):

• It giddily embraces its corniness 

The party scene where all of the guests randomly sing "good-bye" to the children and then go about their business as if nothing happened? Amazing. Or how about when the film stops dead to put on an elaborate puppet show about a "Lonely Goatherd" and ends up being a highlight of the film despite doing nothing to advance the plot. And I would just like to sing the praises for a moment of "Sixteen Going on Seventeen". A song that takes place between the oldest looking teenagers to ever sing about the glories of getting older - since they've already been there. And then some. (Charmain Carr who played "16-year-old" Liesl was 22 at the time of filming.) But I've always loved this final shot after Rolf kisses Liesl and she lets out a childish "WEEEEEE!!" There's a second where the shadow makes it look like she's missing her two front teeth and I've always found it to be the funniest thing:

• Its superb attention to detail

The film is far superior to the stage version of The Sound of Music (a singing and dancing Max and Elsa just makes no sense). But the best part of the film is how they opened it up from the movie soundstages and actually filmed in Austria. Those opening shots of the mountains taken from a helicopter that zooms down to Maria (and apparently flattened Julie Andrews in take after take), the mini travelogue brochure of Salzburg as Maria and the children perform "Do-Re-Me" around the city, gives the film a broad cinematic scope, making it feel epic. But within that wide scope are tiny intricacies that sharpen the focus and details that shade the reality. Like this dress worn by an incoming postulant nun just starting her religious order as Maria returns to the Abbey:

When Maria first meets the Captain he tells her that she'll need to change her dress. But she replies that it's the only one she has. When they enter the abbey all their worldly possessions are given to the poor. ("What about that one?" "The poor didn't want this one...") Right after the shot from the scene above, Maria confesses her love for the Captain to the Mother Abbess who tells Maria to "Climb Every Mountain" (the mountain in question being that hunky naval captain...) and return to let him know how she feels. The very next scene, Maria returns to the von Trapp household dressed in this:

Look familiar? Let's hope that young lady doesn't change her mind and ask for her things back...

• For nuns that know how to dismantle a car engine...and a perfectly timed delivery

• But the reason it works at all and remains so watchable 50 years later: Julie Andrews

As Carrie Underwood's wooden performance proved, no one did it better than Julie. Even Lady Gaga at this year's Oscars, when she sang songs from the movie, did it in a British accent. For no other reason than the fact that Julie Andrews is so synonymous with those songs that you just can't help singing them without Julie's lilt. No offense to Julie Christie, who I enjoy in Darling, but Julie Andrews deserved that Best Actress Oscar that year. It's not her fault that she won the year before for Mary Poppins. And as good as that performance is, this one is even better. Her performance is so sincere that it's simply incapable of feeling false, teetering on twee but never succumbing to cheap sentimentality. Coupled with her firm resolve and nurturing kindness, Andrews takes a woman who is essentially "good" and makes her interesting, while making it all look effortless. There's an entire song dedicated to how deeply flawed Maria is (which is rudely sung at her wedding. Thanks a lot, Sisters), but Andrews makes her even more endearing because of those character quirks. Her contradictions and conflicted emotions give Maria a depth not often found in traditional musicals. And amid the eye rolls and stumbles, Andrews also finds simplistic honesty and surprising moments of subtly sensual longing. Like in the shot I chose as my best:

I was surprised that I couldn't stop thinking about this shot after re-watching the film yesterday for two reasons. The first is I simply don't ever remember seeing it before. When you think of The Sound of Music, immediately your mind goes to musical numbers in the hills. As many times as I've watched it, I couldn't recall this shot ever happening and it's rare for something you know so well to still surprise you with new things. (I immediately thought maybe it had been cut from versions shown on television, but what purpose would that serve?) The other reason I loved the scene is because of the wistful quality Andrews has by gently leaning her head against the wall. It's almost as if she's trying to melt into the background and remain unobserved as her gaze silently gives away the new feelings stirring within her. It's the look of love. And like the observant Baroness, I too recognize it because it reflects my own affection for this film. And if you have something mean to say about it, well, I'll just have Carrie Underwood pray for you...