Vittorio De Sica
1963
119 minutes
The title of this one in English is Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow. You speak some Italian, but for some reason you always have trouble keeping these particular words straight. You always have to drag it through French and remind yourself how close they are to hier, aujourd'hui and demain to tell which is which.
This film is from 1963 and features three vignettes (corresponding roughly to the past, present and future) starring Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni. The indiviual stories are somewhat bawdy. Your parents probably fucked to this film at some point. It must have been popular at the drive-ins. You know your parents went to see Flesh Gordon (that's not a typo) in the waning days of drive-ins, so it's not unlikely. You try not to think about it. You certainly know your own father had an enthusiasm for Sophia Loren, but your own father had an enthusiasm for a lot of women back in those days.
Seriously, stop thinking about it. Just watch the movie.
The "yesterday" segment has a plot where Sophia Loren gets busted (haw) for selling black market cigarettes, but takes advantage of a loophole that they can't send her to jail for it while she is pregnant or until six months after she's delivered a baby. So she comes up with a brilliant plan to get knocked up and stay knocked up continuously until...? This goes fine until after having seven kids in eight years poor Marcello Mastroianni is finally unable to keep up the pace. They consider having a friend knock her up instead, which provides a bit of spicy drama, but thankfully ends up not happening.
It's a funny story, but the current climate of trad-wife BREED HER fetishization among the right wing today puts you off a bit.
The second story is very car-oriented, with poor Marcello wrecking a Rolls Royce while being distracted by a humorously bitchy Sophia. Silly story but fun to see the two of them arguing and hamming it up.
The third has Sophia Loren playing one of those sixties hookers with a heart of gold who never quite gets down to business, with Marcello Mastroianni as her client/boyfriend. Her habit of dressing/undressing in front of the window infuriates her nosy neighbor (and provides some excuse to see Sophia Loren in something flimsy) and distracts the woman's grandson, who ends up deciding that maybe he isn't fit to head off to the monastery after all. This provides the impetus for the plot conflict, which works very well and is just the right mix of spicy and sweet.
You reflect that you happen to have a surprising number of friends who intended to go into the priesthood but ultimately decided not to for one reason or another and wound up doing something radically different. You chalk this up to a life well lived, at least in some portions.
You are now hungry for some lasagna.
Time to choose something different: