A Special Day
A Special Day
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1h 47m
Directed by Ettore Scola • 1977 • Italy
Starring Sophia Loren, Marcello Mastroianni
Italian cinema dream team Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni are cast against glamorous type and deliver two of the finest performances of their careers in this moving, quietly subversive drama from Ettore Scola. Though it’s set in Rome on the historic day in 1938 when Benito Mussolini and the city first rolled out the red carpet for Adolf Hitler, the film takes place entirely in a working-class apartment building, where an unexpected friendship blossoms between a pair of people who haven’t joined the festivities: a conservative housewife and mother tending to her domestic duties and a liberal radio broadcaster awaiting deportation. Scola paints an exquisite portrait in muted tones, a story of two individuals helpless in the face of Fascism’s rise.
Up Next in A Special Day
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Ettore Scola on A SPECIAL DAY
In this interview with director Ettore Scola, conducted in Rome in May 2015, he discusses the arc of his career and why he wanted to create the character of Gabriele in A SPECIAL DAY.
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Sophia Loren on A SPECIAL DAY
This interview with actor Sophia Loren was conducted in Geneva in June 2015. In it, she recalls working with director Ettore Scola on A SPECIAL DAY, her fears about playing Antonietta, and the challenges of shooting the love scene.
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Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni...
Actors Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni had famous on-screen chemistry and appeared in many films together. While in New York to promote A SPECIAL DAY, they recorded an interview for “The Dick Cavett Show.” The resulting hour-long conversation was shown over two episodes, originally broadcas...
