Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow: My Life

by Sophia Loren

  Richard.

  These few words are enough to bring back his voice, his warmth, his intelligence.

  Born in Wales, the twelfth of the thirteen children of a coal miner, Richard had made it to Oxford University where he had studied drama. Always torn between cinema and theater, and being a womanizer and heavy drinker from youth, he’d fallen in love with Elizabeth Taylor on the set for Cleopatra, and a few months later, in 1964, left his wife to marry her. But in the early months of 1973, their marriage had reached a crisis that would lead to their divorce a year later. They remarried in 1975, only to divorce once more, for good this time, in 1976.

  During his stay with us in Marino, Richard was a bundle of nerves, maybe because of the detox diet he had subjected himself to. But all the same he was very likable, brilliant, affectionate, always pouring out ideas and quotations. His love and profound knowledge of literature always came through and made him unique company.

  And yet he, too, fell victim to my skill at Scrabble. I know, it’s hard to accept. Despite his immense knowledge and huge vocabulary, he succumbed to my supremacy, just as Peter had. He’d look at me in dismay when faced with the evidence and I’d chuckle with satisfaction.

  We’d play to while away the time, as we waited for the first “Action!” But shortly before we began shooting The Voyage, De Sica’s health got worse and he was forced to have surgery, which postponed the start of everything for a month. By then, Richard had become one of the family, Cipi called him Uncle, and Edoardo would look at him with his mouth wide open and the wonder typical of toddlers. Although we were both very worried about Vittorio, we nurtured this domestic friendship of ours, which consisted of games, pranks, and sharing secrets. Richard seemed to have found a balance, although it wasn’t to last long.

  On the Friday before we were about to resume shooting, he got a phone call, a fateful one, from Liz in Los Angeles.

  “I’m being operated on tomorrow, Richard, you must come.”

  “You have to be joking,” I wanted to say, but I held my tongue. After all, it was his life and it was better if I kept out of it.

  He probably read my mind when he saw my face, and just gave me a helpless look, as if he were saying, “What can I do? Of course I can’t say no.”

  Carlo understood the situation, and, as usual, settled things once and for all. “Go on, go ahead, as long as you’re back on the set on Monday morning.”

  Richard left, flying fifteen hours on the way over, and another fifteen back, just to hold her hand for a few minutes. But he fulfilled his duty, was at peace with himself, and made sure he was there for the first “Action” on Monday.

  Liz joined him in Rome a few weeks later to spend some time with us, and the rest of the time in a hotel. She was a rogue wave, a loose electron, an arrow aimed straight for his ailing heart, that’s what she was for him.

  When we started shooting The Voyage, although Richard was there, his mind was wandering elsewhere, in search of a solution to his problems.

  He finally found one, albeit temporary, a while later, and he wasted no time letting me know. We were getting ready to be together once more on the set for Brief Encounter, the remake of a famous movie directed by David Lean that we were to shoot in 1974 under the direction of Alan Bridges, when he wrote me this letter. In it he’s as always facetious, but he also knows how to talk about himself in an authentic, profound way, and rejoice in the friendship that united us:

  Have read script. What on earth ever persuaded anybody to do it without me? Incredible impertinence. I shall see you in one week from today. I love you, of course, but it’s also a fine piece for much as I love I wouldn’t do it otherwise . . .

  I’m completely recovered from my recent madness and have rarely felt so content. Elizabeth will never be out of my bones but she is, at last, out of my head. Such love as I had has turned to pity. She is an awful mess and there’s nothing I can do about it without destroying myself. I love you.

  I’m looking forward to seeing you with immense eagerness. And Cipi and Edoardo and Inez and Pasta and Carlo and even England. It’s quite a long time since I’ve been there. I was surprised at how long.

  This time I shall be a good actor for you. I was a bloody idiot last time.

  See you in a week.

  Love,

  Richard

  I forgot to mention that I love you.

  CIAO VITTORIO

  Four years before The Voyage, when I had just become a mother, I had gone back to the set for Sunflower. It was the fall of 1969, and while the world was being rocked with protests, we were traveling between Milan and Russia to make a movie. However, for me it was like being back with the family again, in the garden of my home. The three musketeers were together once more: Vittorio, Marcello, and me. Special guest Carlo Jr. playing himself, my son, in real life and in the movie. So small, he was the ideal travel companion. I could take him everywhere with me, and in any case, I couldn’t stand to be away from him for long.

  Sunflower went back to the war we’d known in Italy, and then broadened its horizons as far as Russia, to the great retreat, to a soldier named Antonio who, almost frozen to death, is saved by a local girl with whom he builds a new family. His Italian wife goes looking for him and, eventually, finds him. There’s a heartbreaking scene between the two women who are overcome by the same pain. In the middle of it all was Marcello Mastroianni who, once again, did his best to personify a man without qualities. Like Dummì in Marriage Italian Style and like Adelina’s husband worn out by too many children in Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow.

  Vittorio wasn’t well; lung cancer was slowing spreading through his body. Yet he hadn’t lost his eye for detail, his love of children—whether Russian or Neapolitan, little did it matter—his skill at describing the everyday toil of women, the heartbreak of farewells said at the station, the tragedies of love frustrated by life’s violence.

  Cipi—and I’m not exaggerating—acted perfectly, and the film was a hit, especially in the United States. Watching it again today, the bright yellow color of the sunflowers, fertilized by the bodies of millions of soldiers, Russian, Italian, German, sent off to die who knows why, it seems like a final appeal to life, a glimmer of hope, a touch of color in a world that slowly grows dimmer before the last great journey.

  And indeed the title of Vittorio’s last movie was The Voyage, shot between October 1973 and January 1974, starring Richard and me. The movie was inspired by a short story by Pirandello, played out between Sicily, Naples, and Venice at the dawning of the First World War. It’s a story of love and death, the classic Italian melodrama. Vittorio was sick, Richard had other things on his mind, and I was more of a mother than an actress. And yet it was a lovely story that moved its audiences, and was once again a hit abroad.

  Two days before finishing, while leafing through the set photos with Vittorio, I came across a beautiful shot of him.

  “Vittò, what a beautiful picture. Write something nice for me!”

  He looked at me tenderly, and complied: “Sofì, Sofì, when you were fifteen you said yes to me.”

  This is one of the pictures that persuaded me to take this long journey down memory lane.

  When the shooting ended in January 1974, I kept working hard, going from Verdict, with Jean Gabin, to the TV movie Brief Encounter, with Richard Burton, until I met Marcello again in Sex Pot. But my thoughts were always with Vittorio.

  On November 13, Carlo called me and, upon hearing a tone in his voice, my first instinct was to hang up. I didn’t feel like listening to what he had to say to me, something that I already knew deep down inside. And that was it—De Sica had died, in Paris, just a few miles from my house. We were close and yet very far away, on opposite shores of the same river where our story had flowed together.

  He died in the American Hospital and his family gave precise orders that their privacy be respected, which meant that even his dearest friends were not to intrude. I felt helpless, frozen in my pain. I didn’t know which
way to turn, what to do, how to find relief. One thing was sure, however, I couldn’t stay home like that without saying good-bye to him before he left for Rome.

  I called the hospital once, a dozen, a hundred times, and the answer was always the same: “I’m sorry, Signora, it’s impossible.”

  After countless attempts to make contact, I finally found an opportunity to sneak into the hospital. A compliant hospital worker escorted me to the morgue, but it was locked. From the window, I could see his coffin, which had already been sealed. Next to it was a cot, where his body had lain until shortly before. Where his head had rested I noticed a stain from the pomade he always wore. Suddenly, I could smell its fragrance in my mind, and I started crying, harder than I’d ever cried before.

  NEITHER A SOLDIER, A HUSBAND, NOR A FATHER

  Without De Sica, I was convinced that I would never work again. Or rather, I thought that though I might act again, I would never again find a role that would win me over and make me soar. If Vittorio had still been alive, I’m sure that seeing me in A Special Day would have made him proud. After all, I could never have played Antonietta if I hadn’t first played Cesira, Adelina, and Filumena.

  In 1977, Ettore Scola, a great filmmaker, rigorous, eloquent, idealistic, presented Carlo with the screenplay for A Special Day. The story sounded like it had been written specially for Marcello and me. Delicate and profoundly human, it spoke to us of our lives, about those of us who had experienced the war.

  That “special day” was May 6, 1938, when Rome, disguised as the capital of an empire, and Mussolini welcomed the Führer with a huge carnival parade. The whole city flocked to the streets. Everyone or almost everyone. There were a few who preferred not to go out, who chose to stay indoors in the building on Via XXI Aprile, a large tenement building that spoke of conformism and normality. There, stuck in the folds of the regime, are Gabriele, a radio broadcaster who has just been fired for his anti-Fascist ideas and his homosexuality and is about to be deported to the border, and Antonietta, a weary housewife, a mother of an army of young ballila, the name for the members of a Fascist youth organization, consumed by a solitude she isn’t even aware of.

  When Antonietta follows her mynah bird that has escaped from the balcony, she and Gabriele end up on the rooftop, in between the sheets drying under the sun. Their encounter is intense but reserved, and lets us glimpse that, behind the dark circles under their eyes, a few steps of the rumba, the coffee beans scattered on the floor, there is a desire to explore different emotions, to emerge from stereotypes, to change their lives even by a fraction.

  While Gabriele and Antonietta brush past each other, confessing their own limits and weaknesses, the radio, the third character in the movie, broadcasts the pounding noise of the parade, and the custodian of the building watches over everything in a permanent rage to make sure that nothing changes. And yet she, too, this embittered person left in charge that day, realizes that their timid encounter, like any encounter, will break rules.

  Aging and despondent, Antonietta falls in love with her gentle neighbor. Previously, her only hobby was to paste pictures of Mussolini in a photo album, and Gabriele tells her that he doesn’t match any of the Fascist models she thinks she believes in. He whispers to her that he is neither a soldier, a husband, nor a father. He’s just a man.

  Carlo found it hard to finance the movie, but managed to find backers in Canada, so we could start shooting. But Marcello and I had come to symbolize youth and beauty, so playing the parts of two deliberately marginalized and subdued characters was a huge challenge. Scola was a good friend of Marcello, and had no doubts about him, but he did have some about me. He was afraid that my exuberant physique wouldn’t be able to fit into the role of a demure woman without makeup who wore a faded cotton housedress.

  I instantly felt his lack of confidence, and the first few days of shooting weren’t easy. I felt that the character belonged to me, but I still needed the director’s trust to be able to find the key to enter her mind and body.

  After a few days, without my knowing, Carlo called Ettore.

  “Scola, ciao. It’s Ponti. What’s going on? You made Sophia cry.”

  “Who me?” he answered. “How’s that?”

  “Maybe she feels uncomfortable, maybe the clothes . . .”

  Scola wouldn’t back down an inch.

  “Sophia is a great actress, she’s the one who has to find a way to fit into those clothes. It’s not the clothes that need to be changed.”

  Carlo had to agree. He had been the first to picture me wearing Antonietta’s housedress, and he wasn’t the kind of man who sought compromises where they weren’t needed. He believed in the story, in the filmmaker, and in me.

  Maybe the phone call helped to give us some breathing space anyway, to help all three of us understand that an actor’s identification with a character is a delicate process, one that takes time.

  A few more days went by and I finally fell in love with that very normal, but very special woman. I will forever be grateful to Ettore. The movie was a huge success, raking in lots of awards, winning over the public and the critics and a very special place in my heart.

  • • •

  While we were shooting A Special Day, Riccardo Scicolone, my father, passed away.

  One morning, my sister called me while I was on the set. She was in tears. “Sofì, hurry, Papà’s not well.”

  I rushed to the hospital to find the women in his life standing around his bed. Mammina, Maria, and his latest companion, a woman from Germany. I went up to him and squeezed his hand. He stared at me. I stared back, as if paralyzed. I smiled at him and then moved toward the window where Maria was weeping. I looked out. Seen from up there the cars, people, bicycles looked like nothing more than toys. I tried to cry, too, but I couldn’t.

  XII

  SEVENTEEN DAYS

  THUNDERBOLTS

  One morning in February 1977, two police cars drove through the gates of Villa Sara, in Marino. The officers were members of the Guardia di Finanza, the Italian law enforcement agency that deals with financial crime and smuggling. They searched the entire house, and made a detailed list of all the furniture, paintings and other valuables. A similar search was being done at the very same moment at the Roman offices of Champion, Carlo’s production company. The investigation had been initiated by Public Prosecutor Paolino Dell’Anno, who accused Carlo, as a resident in Italy (despite the fact that Carlo had been a French citizen and a foreign resident for many years), of unlawful currency dealings concerning the sale of movies on the international market. He was also accused of having coproduced movies with foreign businesses, and of having taken advantage of concessions provided by Italian law to do so. According to the charges, he’d no right to do that, because they were movies that had been entirely funded abroad.

  It was a bolt from the blue, and it robbed us of our peace of mind and sense of security. All our lives we had always been law-abiding citizens, and we were in no way prepared for what was happening to us. We tried not to panic and to preserve our family’s equilibrium, but it wasn’t easy and we had to muster all the moral strength we had.

  A month later, on March 8, I was in Rome working on the release of A Special Day. When I got to Rome’s Fiumicino Airport to take the last flight to Paris, I was stopped at customs and held overnight for questioning. The officers asked me questions I didn’t know how to answer. “I’m an actress, not a businesswoman,” I said, trying to defend myself, to no avail. It was only thanks to my lawyer’s intervention that I was able to get my passport back and take the first dawn flight to Paris, where we were living. Waiting for me at the Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport, besides Carlo, was a crowd of reporters on the warpath. It was a very unpleasant experience, and I fooled myself into thinking it would end there.

  Instead, by that time we had entered what seemed like a Kafkaesque castle, where everything appeared to be the exact opposite of everything else. Paolino Dell’Anno’s investigation led to Carlo
being put on trial for smuggling money abroad and being sentenced to four years in prison. He was later completely cleared of the charges. Carlo was later also cleared of the charges that concerned his international coproduction of films. Although everything worked out in the end, those were difficult years, years when we felt vulnerable and helpless.

  There seemed to be no end to our problems with the law. We were next accused of the crime of offshore relocation (the sham relocation abroad of a company’s tax address that, instead, actually does its business in Italy), charges that were without grounds, wholly unfounded. This led to one of our collections of paintings being sequestered and later confiscated. These were paintings that we had been fortunate to be able to collect over the years, thanks our hard work. The confiscation (which took several years to sort out and several wearisome trials) wounded us deeply. On top of what it ended up costing us, it touched one of the passions of our life. When the paintings were returned to us, that happy ending would never completely wipe out the bitterness it had caused.

  THE SENTENCE

  But of all the things that happened to us, there was one that was even more traumatic for me personally. During that same period, I was hit by a sentence for alleged tax evasion (something that I never did) from earnings made many years before. I couldn’t believe it. The court’s decision caught me completely off guard. It stunned me.

  Between the late 1950s and the early 1960s I had lived abroad, which meant that my tax residence was abroad as well. That’s why my accountant from that period hadn’t made me file an income tax return. Years later, however, another accountant (who obviously wasn’t aware of his predecessor’s decision) encouraged me to present a fiscal agreement for that very same period of time. By so doing, I was contradicting the fact that my residence was elsewhere during that period. Practically speaking, I was accusing myself of not having filed an income tax return.