Popular reviews

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  Review by Sam Meltzer ★★★½ 4

  Two Women is an emotional rollercoaster that doesn’t shy away from the harsh reality of war and showcases this short yet extremely powerful time in this woman’s life. At times it was difficult to sit thought, but it is so worth it. A truly beautiful film that is very short in length because it shouldn’t be long, allowing it to capture what it needs to perfectly in about 100 minutes. It may not have. the strongest screenplay or direction, but it definitely works. 

  Sophia Loren is… perfect. Nothing else in the film quite matched up to her performance. What she did in this movie is so extraordinary in every sense that I found it as true perfection. When she feels…

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  Review by 📀 Cammmalot 📀 ★★★ 2

  ”Who are you angry at signora?”
  “Everyone”

  This film from Vittorio De Sica about a mother and daughter in war torn Italy is all about Sophia Loren’s Oscar winning performance. The print I watched was an english dub of horrendous quality, and yet her abilities still leapt from the screen and made this movie engaging. I also went into it completely cold, so yes I was unprepared for and shocked by those last 20 minutes.

  ”Rotten thieving bastards do you know what you have done?”

  
  Cinematic Time Capsule - 1960 Ranked

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  Review by Marta Luvi ★★★ 5

  This started out - and stayed, for the most part - an emotional snapshot of humanity during the last hour of WWII.

  So yeah I am deeply saddened alright.
  Saddened that the last portion of the film after that scene was so poorly structured it felt, quite frankly, wasted. I understand that it's not the only problem that sequence has and I do not indend to justify it, but the racial issue pales in comparison to the mistreatment of emotional trauma in a neorealist piece that had so far been so very sensitive to all sides.

  It could've been magnificent, and yet it doesn't live up to its own premises.

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  Review by theironcupcake ★★½ 10

  "You can do without a lot of things, but not love."

  (Warning: spoilers ahead, including the ending.)

  After revisiting Mario Monicelli's Big Deal on Madonna Street and finding that it held up far better than I remembered, I decided to do a double feature inspired by editor Adriana Novelli and rewatch another Italian cinema classic that she worked on, Vittorio De Sica's WWII period piece Two Women. Unfortunately I have to report a polar opposite reaction; the powerful drama in my memories turned out to be a mediocrity.

  I don't blame Sophia Loren (winner of the Best Actress Oscar) or Jean-Paul Belmondo, who do the best they can in this poorly paced story as a widowed mother and fervent antifascist,…

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  Review by Zoë 🐝 ★★ 31

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  TW: rape

  Was legitimately enjoying this (mostly because of Sophia Loren's performance) until 20 minutes from the end when Sophia Loren's character and her 12 year old daughter get gang raped by the only Black men in the entire movie, and later it is implied the same men raped half of a nearby village! I'm sorry, is this The Birth of A Nation? What kind of racist bullshit is this?!

  EDIT: I recommend reading the comments for an expanded discussion from some different viewpoints on the rape scene in the film.

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  Review by Jumpingfrog ★★★★

  Two Women could have been a very different film. Originally envisioned as an Italian/ American co-production to star Anna Magnani as the mother and 26 year old Sophia Loren as the daughter it was to have been directed by Hollywood legend George Cukor. However Magnani dropped out (possibly as she felt she was too young to play Loren's mother) as did Cukor and Paramount. Former Italian neorealist Vittorio de Sica (he of Bicycle Thieves) took over the direction, gave Loren the role of the mother (playing slightly above her own age) and in a change from the source novel her daughter became a adolescent child played by newcomer 12 year old Eleonora Brown. A fortuitous decision as the film was…

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  Review by trolleyfreak ★★★★ 2

  *Trolley's 2017 Watchlist #6/50*

  'Do you know what they have done those 'heroes' that you command? Do you know what your great soldiers have done in a holy church under the eyes of the madonna? Do you know?' (Sophia Loren as Cesira)

  In Italy during the days following World War II, screenwriter Cesare Zavattini developed a set of principles for what would emerge as the most important school of filmmaking conceived in that country: neorealism.

  Zavattini called for a type of film that would tell fictional stories in a documentary style and in the late ‘40’s his philosophies were followed by numerous directors including Roberto Rossellini and the young Federico Fellini but the filmmaker who most effectively brought the neorealist…

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  Review by BrandonHabes ★★★★★ 5

  Notice the photographs at the beginning as the credits roll. These casual, pedestrian images appear to be “real life” events during wartime Italy, frozen in time and perfectly still, silent, and undisturbed. It would be easy to forget there’s a savage war raging outside these banal photographs, and even easier to think the residents depicted were living during a time of peace. The final still image now becomes a tableaux of moving bodies in the city, and almost immediately the sense of normal is threatened by the sound of air raids as the people scatter in fear, ducking to take shelter. This is the pattern that defines the entire film: stasis, rupture, seeking sanctuary. War begins on the periphery and…

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  Review by Jenna Ipcar ★★★ 2

  Sophia Loren finally got a chance to showcase her true acting chops and she did not let it pass her by. She’s the heart and soul of the entire film, pretty much the only fully fleshed out character where all others around her exist in sketches of various depth. John Paul Belmondo makes for a surprisingly convincing Bible nerd—uh, I mean, man of learning. I loved the contrast between his astute political mindedness and contempt towards fascism while the majority of the countryside shrugs through their own oppression. Made me think of how with the Internet we both have more vocal political discourse and yet probably an equal amount of indifference all the same. It’s hard to carry the burden…

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  Review by Jordan James Brooks ★★★★½ 5

  “Hey! When is this war going to end?”

  Vittorio De Sica kicks off his sixties run with this bleak atmospheric war-drama, starring Sophia Loren. And ironically - out of all of her memorable performances, it’s always this one that seemingly defines her acting career for me. Perhaps it’s because she doesn’t share the lead with such a dominant force as Marcello Mastroianni, so she is much more able to drive the narrative herself, and all eyes and ears are on her for the entire duration. I mean - hey, she earned herself a damn Oscar for her powerful performance in this!

  The premise takes place during the Second World War, and follows the widow, Cesira (Loren) and her only daughter,…

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  Review by ana ★★★★

  sophia loren is mesmerizing as a woman fighting for herself and more importantly, the life of her daughter, from the horrors of war as it dwindles down. it's a harrowing performance that tears at the heart and show the impact war has on people who just want to live.

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  Review by Mark Cunliffe 🇵🇸 ★★★½

  "Do you know what they have done those 'heroes' that you command? Do you know what your great soldiers have done in a holy church under the eyes of the Madonna? Do you know?"

  This heartbreaking tale concerning a protective and devoted mother and her innocent teenage daughter set in the mountains and the ruins of WWII Italy, culminates in the daughter being robbed most brutally of her innocence by the liberating forces of the French Expeditionary Corps' colonial Moroccan troops; a savage mass rape and murder that was so prolific it was given it's own name in Italy; Marocchinate.

  These real events shaped Alberto Moravia's 1957 novel La Ciociara, which this Vittorio de Sica film is based upon. The…