by Sophia Loren
After all those years of Hollywood, Two Women was taking me back home, to the harsh reality of my childhood. The war, which had long been buried inside me, was now resurfacing to give a voice to this wounded woman in Moravia’s story, to her suffering, to her courage. I thought about Mammina and how she’d fought to defend us, to get us food and water. I thought about how she must have felt those nights when the Moroccan soldiers camped out in the entrance hall came knocking on our door in a drunken state. About how she watched, without anyone noticing, as those young American marines came to our parlor to drink brandy. Because she knew there was danger everywhere, at all times, even in the places you felt safest.
When they introduced Eleonora Brown to me, the young girl who had been chosen for the part of Rosetta, I instantly felt responsible for her, for us. Her face was shy and intelligent and the work that awaited us was hard. How could I possibly become her mother? Suffer for her? How could I help her to place her trust in me? My instinct encouraged me to look at her with the same kindness I’d felt when I was looked upon as a child, with the same love I’d been protected and caressed with. And it worked.
Eleonora was born in Naples, the daughter of a Neapolitan woman and an American who had met during the war, and she was often accompanied to the set by her aunt. She was thirteen, little more than a child, with a child’s eyes in the body of an adolescent.
De Sica was a master at getting nonprofessionals to act. He’d proven it in Shoeshine, in Umberto D., in Miracle in Milan. But in Two Women he truly outdid himself. He always got what he wanted, whatever it took. While shooting one of the most dramatic scenes, the one where Rosetta has fallen in love with their friend Michele, played by Jean-Paul Belmondo, he even went so far as to tell Eleonora that her parents had had an accident.
“I’m sorry, dear, I’m so sorry . . .” he said in a dramatic voice filled with pity. “They’re in the hospital now, their condition is serious, but there’s no telling . . . Come on, come on, child . . .”
Eleonora started crying her eyes out, and we had to stop shooting. It was impossible to continue working. Vittorio had gone one step too far.
“Eleonora!” I said and immediately ran to her side. “It’s not true! He’s saying things that aren’t true just to make you cry! Come on, get over it, smile . . .”
But the shock had been too much for her and we had to stop for a while.
Of course, it wasn’t easy for a young girl to express such dramatic emotions spontaneously. When Vittorio failed to help her, or when he succeeded by overdoing it, I would step in, to mitigate, to inspire, to suggest. In a scene in which Rosetta is completely naked while I help her wash, it took everything I had to help her overcome her embarrassment and retain her sense of decency while she was so exposed.
In time we got to know each other very well and to love each other, like a mother and daughter, and her interpretation of Rosetta went down in cinematic history. The experience of that movie was so intense that we have stayed friends and often talk to each other even now.
We started shooting on August 10, 1960. The crew was staying on the hills around Gaeta. Carlo and I rented a large white house overlooking the gulf. From my window I could see Pozzuoli. “This is much more beautiful than Beverly Hills,” said Vittorio. “You were born here, this is where you belong.” The truth of the matter is I was completely at ease, with no makeup on, my ragged dress, white with dust under the summer sun. I liked being with the extras, in the grottoes, my feet bare while carrying a suitcase on my head.
Under the air raid sirens, I saw myself back in the railway tunnel again, in the company of mice and cockroaches. I recognized the goat’s milk and the grumpy grin of the shepherds, I gazed at those poor dishes with an appetite, at that dark bread we’d missed so much when food was so scarce.
De Sica kept me under control, he’d pull me back down if I flew too high, he’d lift me up if I was too dejected. But when we got to the anxiety, the despair, he freed my heart of all its restrictions, all impediments. He let the miracle come true, he let my Cesira come to light and find her own way.
It was the most difficult role I’d played in my entire career. Without Vittorio I would never have succeeded in wiping the slate clean so that I could start over in a new life, which at that very moment seemed to me to be the only one possible. As De Sica shot the scene, his eyes filled up with tears: “Use this. Take one is good!!” He knew how to apply pressure on my feelings with a skill that really turned me into a woman, so distant from the glamour of stardom.
Even now when I happen to watch Two Women, all I need is one scene, just one, to relive all the emotion just like the first time. A rock I throw at the Allies’ jeep after their troops have violated Cesira and Rosetta and my cursing them—“Thieves, cuckolds, sons of bitches”—is an act of rebellion against all the hatred that had held the world hostage for so many years. The flame of that rebellion must always burn, even in times of peace, keeping us watchful and alive. So that nothing like this will ever happen again.
Two Women won twenty awards for me besides the Oscar, including a David di Donatello, a Silver Ribbon, and Best Actress in Cannes. It also led to a beautiful interview with Alberto Moravia, which traced back over my whole life. Reading it today now that fifty years have gone still brings tears to my eyes.
THE MYSTERY OF BEING NORMAL
As I read that interview and listen to the voice of the great writer, Alberto Moravia, in the questions he posed to me, I go back to Pozzuoli, to its small harbor, with its slimy, green water strewn with yellow lemon rinds. The Pozzuoli of old houses and shady old back alleys, of the Roman ruins and the Temple of Serapis, whose columns rise out of water since the earth around them subsided. But also the Pozzuoli of the construction sites, of the Ansaldo cannon factory, where Papà Mimì worked.
Led by Moravia, I return to our small apartment, with its carved walnut furniture and the kitchen, where I would do my homework while Mamma Luisa offered me cups of coffee and told me stories in dialect. In her palace, my grandmother would make bread topped with beans for lunch, the same dish that’s known as minestrina (small soup) in Ciociaria. In the evening we’d eat pasta, because when the men got back from work they needed to have a filling meal. On the 27th of every month I’d go to Naples with Zia Dora, who’d buy me a chocolate drink with whipped cream and a sfogliatella (shell-shaped pastry), at Caflish’s. That was where I saw Anna Magnani for the first time. There she was, exuding charm from a large poster above the theater where she was acting in a play.
In that Pozzuoli of my memories, I can feel my father’s shadow, that of a stranger, who was drawn to our house by my mother’s artful telegrams, but who couldn’t wait to leave. L’asino tra i suoni, is how Neapolitans describe someone like him, like a fish out of water, not much more than an intruder. He was tall, distinguished-looking, with graying hair, a hook nose, large hands and feet, but slender ankles and wrists. A nice smile, a scornful expression. A real charmer.
As I recalled my father, Moravia started to dig mercilessly into my past. And he brought to light the wound from which Sophia Loren was born. The differentness of my family—my absent father, my mother who was more beautiful than other mothers—had made me suffer tremendously. It had filled me with shame, and at the same time it was my fortune. It was the strength that forced me to work, to show others who I was, to choose a path for myself when I was still very young. In other words, “success is a surrogate for unattainable normality.” I headed for Rome, fleeing a fatherless child to find myself in the body of the actress I wanted to become.
A few years later, Carlo would also have a dual role in my life. He was the producer who could help me to fulfill my dream of making movies, and he was also the man who could offer me the gift of the normal life I so longed for. But once again there was a differentness to our relationship. When we met, we faced obstacles that wouldn’t allow us to be together, to be normal. These were difficulties that stymied me on the one hand, but, perhaps, spurred me
on as well.
When I left Rome for Hollywood, just as I had left Pozzuoli for Rome, I was leaving behind a situation with no way out, to try to forge a normal path of my own. I couldn’t find a normal life, however. It didn’t exist for me. It was this impossibility that gave me the inner, psychological drive that enabled me to identify with my characters and bring them to life, to delve deeper into their reality and to learn more about myself and the world.
“You never suffer in vain,” says Moravia, “at least when you have the willingness to know why you’re suffering.”
Signora Brambilla, the woman who took it upon herself to accuse Carlo of bigamy, stole the normal life I was seeking. And I responded with Two Women, which consecrated me in the eyes of the world. It was my destiny. Whereas in cinema I prefer passionate and tragic parts, strong and emotional characters, in life I want to be the exact opposite: objective, controlled, introverted. In short, normal. But a normal life escapes me, my joie de vivre, my liveliness, my temperament keep me from having one. So I try to find fulfillment through my art, playing characters toward whom I feel drawn precisely because they’re so different from what I’d like to be in life. That’s all. And yet it’s so much.
THE DREAM
I had a dream that I’m on a beach, at sunset, and the sea is very calm, immense, smooth, like an endless stretch of blue satin. The setting sun is a fiery red. Suddenly, I start running along the beach and I run without ever stopping. I’m still running when I wake up.
Moravia read it this way, “in the manner of the oracles who would interpret ancient dreams”: the sea represents the normality that I try in vain to reach. The sun is success. If I wanted to I could just stand here and watch the peacefulness of the sea; instead I want to chase after my sun. And, like all those who want to reach the sun, I have a long way to go, but I go on with my race because that sun, albeit very far away, comforts me and lights the way.
VIII
LA DOLCE VITA
MARCELLO
Marcello, Marcello . . . My race for the sun would never have been as vivid or as richly satisfying without Marcello Mastroianni. His gentle gaze, his kind smile have always accompanied me, offering me a sense of security, joy, and so many other emotions. Those twelve movies we made together have certainly left their mark. The first time, I was twenty and he was thirty. The last time, he was seventy and I was sixty. In between, we had our long friendship, filled with affection and tenderness that would light up with passion on the set.
We had chemistry between us, and it never let us down. The harmony that joined us—which could be sexy, happy, sad, ironic, always deeply human—was so spontaneous that many people wondered if there might be something more between us. And we always just smiled, shrugging our shoulders: “Nothing at all! These are simply the miracles of cinema, of life.”
Marcello even confirmed this publicly, joking with Enzo Biagi, a famous Italian journalist and writer, who asked him about the two of us: “The woman I have had the longest relationship with is Sophia . . . We’ve been together since 1954 . . .” And then he added, more seriously: “I like the fact that Sophia isn’t just a good actress, but a real person. There’s never been anything between us. A deep affection: it’s too easy to compare it to that between a brother and a sister, because it’s really something quite different.”
I also got along very well with Marcello’s mother, Signora Ida. She would often invite me over to their place for lunch because she knew I liked good cooking. “Sofì, I want to make rabbit cacciatore for you tomorrow, can you come over?” She had good common sense. She was proud of her sons—Marcello’s brother, Ruggero, was a highly regarded film editor—but she had her feet firmly rooted to the ground. She had been born poor, and she had refused to embellish her past or invent a false identity. She lived in the same two-room apartment where she’d lived all her life.
She was happy when Marcello was named a commendatore, or knight commander, a great honor in Italy, and she framed the diploma and his photograph with Aldo Moro, the Italian prime minister at the time, complete with a dedication so she could show it to her neighbors. But she was unhappy about her elder son’s extramarital affairs, which she could never really fathom. She did, however, understand perfectly his close friendships, like his and mine, which were based on affection and loyalty.
I always had the feeling that she counted on our relationship; maybe it gave her a sense of security. Whenever she’d see him with a different partner in the movies, she’d call him up and ask worried: “Marcè, what’s happened? Did you have an argument with Sophia?”
Even today I don’t know where the secret of our success lay. What I do know is that we had lots of fun, and I think this came out in our movies. After making Too Bad She’s Bad with Sandro Blasetti in 1954, our first job together, we put ourselves in the hands of De Sica, who understood us better than anyone else, and who knew how to get in on the fun with us. He was the one to show us the way, he was the key to our silver-screen love. When the baton was passed to Dino Risi, to Giorgio Capitani, and then to Ettore Scola, to Lina Wertmüller, and, lastly, to Robert Altman in Ready to Wear, we had adjusted to each other. So well did we know each other that all we had to do to play any role was just be ourselves. We didn’t need to rehearse, we simply moved in unison. It came naturally to us, like two friends off to a spring picnic. “Sofì, how about it, should we go for it?” he’d say to me.
Now that I think of it, maybe our secret indeed lay in that naturalness, which reflected our everyday lives, our common experiences. We understood the hopes and flaws of ordinary people. In Italy, as elsewhere, people are sometimes poor, other times petit bourgeois; some are snobbish, some pompous. The audience could see itself in our characters. Yet these relatable characters are not only Italian—they share a vast collection of human feelings, universal ones, which we drew on and which spoke to audiences the world over. We brought to our characters that Italian way of life that, with its sense of irony, succeeds in crossing every national barrier.
Marcello and I shared the same reserve, the same optimism. And maybe more than anything else, we shared a certain joie de vivre and the complete awareness of just how lucky we were.
“I believe in friends, the landscape, good food, and work,” Marcello would often say with his marvelous simplicity. Work saved him from his laziness. Marcello was a born idler.When he wasn’t acting, he felt like “a flag without pride.” I, on the other hand, was always on the go, preparing every part diligently, organizing my life as if it were an assembly line.
“I know I’m a flash in the pan,” he said one day in an interview with Oriana Fallaci, the famous Italian journalist and writer. “A spark that’s goes right out if someone doesn’t throw some gasoline on it.”
He said he was superficial, yet few in his shoes would have revealed their inner feelings with the same degree of honesty. It’s true, he let things slide along, he never faced things head on, he let himself be pulled along. Some say that, because of his absentminded air and his candor, there was always something of the child about him. For him, being an actor was a chance to hide behind someone else’s feelings, while for me acting meant revealing my deepest feelings. In other words, it was a game, an escape route to slip down unobtrusively.
We both believed in the strength of kindness, we always ignored the gossip, and we never stuck our noses into other people’s lives. His delicate soul was visible in every gesture, in every word he uttered. Maybe that’s why being labeled a Latin lover always annoyed him. “There are land surveyors who’ve had more affairs than me,” he’d say to defend himself from the mediocrity of commonplaces.
His early life had been hard, just as mine had been. Marcello was born in 1924 in Fontana Liri, near Frosinone. His family moved to Rome when he was still a child, to the San Giovanni quarter of the city. He’d experienced the war as though it were an adventure. To avoid the draft he’d taken part in a contest for illustrators organized by Todt, a large German company that built bri
dges and roads for the Wehrmacht. That way he got a job with the Istituto Geografico Militare in Florence, but after September 8, 1943, the company came under German control and was relocated to Dobbiaco. To avoid the risk of being dispatched to Germany, in 1944, Marcello fled Dobbiaco with a fake pass, and went to Venice, where he made a living selling a friend’s artwork, until the Allies arrived. When he finally returned to Rome, with some money saved up for his family, he found out that his younger brother, Ruggero, had done even better than he had, bringing home leftover food every night from his job at the Hotel Excelsior.
Casa Mastroianni, just like Casa Villani, had experienced hardship and struggled to make ends meet. We were born into that life. That’s the way Italy was at the time, and maybe that’s another reason why we loved each other. Growing up in Rome, Marcello had to share a bed with his mother until he was twenty-seven because there was no room in the house. His brother slept on the floor on the other side of the bed, and his father, who was a carpenter, slept in the hallway.
When the war ended, life became a little easier, and there was new hope. There was also a place right across the street where you could dance. Marcello had fallen head over heels in love with Silvana Mangano, who lived in the same neighborhood as he did, but after a year she had a breakthrough in cinema and got engaged to Dino De Laurentiis. Although it had been a love of youth, he’d felt deeply hurt at losing her all the same. One day he even went to see her on the set for Bitter Rice, navigating the rice fields and defying the humidity and mosquitoes, but she pretended not to see him.
Marcello had wanted to become an architect, but times were hard, and you had to make do with what you could get. He worked as a building surveyor, and as an accountant in a film production company, but was fired after a couple of years. In the meantime, he’d started acting for the Centro Universitario Teatrale, where he’d been noticed by Luchino Visconti, so he shifted for himself, moving between theater and Cinecittà. Rising through the ranks wasn’t easy, and the Count, which was how we often referred to Visconti, was capable of making even Marcello suffer—“Why don’t you go drive a streetcar? You’re like a gorilla!” he said to him during the rehearsals for the play Oreste, by Vittorio Alfieri. But Visconti did teach him a lot. Marcello never would use the informal “tu” to address Visconti—or, for that matter, with De Sica, despite their closeness.