A fine showcase for Sophia Loren who at the age of thirty portrays and older women seemingly at death's door as well as a young girl of seventeen. And throughout she has a fantastic rapport with Marcello Mastroianni and however fantastical becomes the action, however unrealistic the Italian 'realism' we believe in her. She is not, if there is such a thing, a 'classic' beauty and yet she always looks lovely. Her face can express sadness, concern, happiness and glee, all within seconds of each other and with her all the time remaining attractive. Her body is probably even more remarkable but it is the way she can move that is truly magical, and sexy. She can striptese all day long but the magic is when she begins to walk or skip along the street. Remarkable. And on the screen, of course, quite magical. So if the first half of this Vittorio De Sica film can be sluggish with comedic moments that don't quite cut it today (if they ever did outside of Italy) there is always Loren to look at and the pairing of the two to enjoy. Things get going and if we find it hard to glorify prostitution one moment and femininity and motherhood the next, it is not a problem for the Italians and eventually we too are swept along in a romanticised wave of well being.

... although there are occasional screwball elements. I was most struck in the first half how the Mastroianni character is constantly dashing Loren's dreams and expectations of how events are going to go - taking her to the races, getting her her own place, taking her to meet his mother. The (spoiler alert!) introduction of the children in the second half makes her motivations more palatable to me. She seems less pathetically clingy to this awful man because she wants legitimacy and security for her children. I saw the plot twist about how they initially get married coming from a mile away, but thankfully the whole movie doesn't hinge on that little bit of trickery. I thought Ms. Loren was masterful at playing her character at different ages and emotional states, yet always we felt like it was the same person.

Has Sophia Loren ever been in a movie that wasn't to die for? Vittorio De Sica's Academy Award-nominated "Matrimonio all'italiana" ("Marriage Italian Style" in English) stars her and Marcello Mastroianni as a country girl and a businessman in a romance in post-war Naples.

This is quite a different focus on post-war Italy from De Sica's "Bicycle Thieves". That one looked at the poverty that pervaded the country at the time. Here he just lets Loren and Mastroianni be as zany as they want, while also managing to address important topics. It strikes me as the sort of movie that they had a lot of fun making (not least because of the sexy shots of Sophia Loren). Basically, it reminds us why De Sica was one of the greatest directors of all time, and why Loren and Mastroianni were some of the greatest actors of all time. If you consider yourself a film buff, then you owe it to yourself to watch this movie.