by Sophia Loren
My sincerest regards
On June 5 at 6:20 a.m. I left prison to serve the rest of my sentence under house arrest, at my mother’s home in Rome, according to the law. I was thinner, disillusioned, much wiser. I was free again, ready to embrace my children, my heart unburdened at last. And I hoped that the truth would eventually prevail.
Almost thirty years later, in October 2013, I finally saw the end of another judicial matter, dating back to 1974, when, according to the charges brought against me, and that were once again unfounded, I had omitted something from my income tax return. This was followed by years of appeals and defenses before the Tax Board, at every level, until the Court of Cassation finally did justice by upholding the correctness of my application of the law and the payment of my taxes. Another memorable example of the slowness of the Italian justice system.
XIII
THE MONA LISA SMILE
A MORNING AT THE MUSEUM
By the early 1980s, my career had been dazzling, and yet before then I hadn’t had a chance to really look back. Now, at last, I could stand back and reconsider the meaning of my success, and the relationship between appearance and reality. I’d always felt beautiful, but it was a restless kind of beauty, that had never been enough in itself. And beauty, no doubt, can turn into a drawback if you attach too much importance to it. It trips you up when least you expect it. It makes you soar higher, and then suddenly it lets you go and you tumble—a disastrous thing if that’s where you’ve focused all your attention.
I thought about the meaning of beauty and charm. What exactly is charm? If we could define it, then it would be an ingredient anyone could have. But charm is actually a natural gift. It’s a mystery, which, unlike physical beauty, has the advantage of not fading with age. Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Rita Levi-Montalcini, Katharine Hepburn, and Greta Garbo come to mind. And so does Mona Lisa.
On a chilly winter morning in the early 1980s, I visited the Louvre, which was unusually quiet. In the rooms that are almost always crowded with tourists, a gentle, soothing tranquillity hung everywhere, in which the visitors and the paintings on the walls were free to have a conversation with each other like old friends. That is how I suddenly caught sight of that modest poplar wood panel, surprisingly small given its fame. There is almost always a crowd of admirers in front of the Mona Lisa, but that day I was alone and I could finally enjoy her company with no need to hurry.
I looked at it for a long time, searching for an answer to my questions in its enigmatic smile. Time was passing for me, too; my experience in prison had left in its wake a feeling of exhaustion and pain, in spite of the fact that my children were growing up strong, handsome, bursting with energy, making me prouder every day. I was approaching the age of fifty, and the beauty that had been my companion in life, ever since the days when I was crowned “princess of the sea,” posed questions of me now that required deep reflection.
That morning, Mona Lisa herself didn’t seem as beautiful as before. There was something masculine about her. She’d put on a few pounds, and she would never have passed a screen test at Cinecittà. And yet, at that very moment I understood why she had seduced all of humanity with her magnetism. Mona Lisa’s gaze revealed a secret that was to change my life: this lady’s charm arose from her inner serenity, her profound self-knowledge. And, as George Cukor once said, there is no beauty that can compete with the knowledge and acceptance of who we really are.
By that time I knew perfectly well who I was, and I felt complete when surrounded by my loving family. Cinema was my passion, but I had other interests as well. I was at peace with myself, comfortable in my own skin, at ease in my life. I knew how to spend my energy and where to find joy. And, thanks to Charlie Chaplin’s precious advice, I’d even learned to say “No” once in a while. Only age can offer you this sense of self-confidence. And only this self-confidence can nourish the beauty within each one of us.
True beauty, besides being its own expression, is a gift for all those around us. Cultivating beauty is a form of respect for those we love. Of course, as you get older it’s slightly more difficult, and really becomes a question of discipline. Our body demands patience, care, and attention. To all those who have asked me what my secret is over the years, I have always tried to answer with plain common sense: each one of us must strike the right balance between rest and movement, activity and sleep, the pleasures of food, and the taste for a healthy and well-balanced diet. But the real fountain of youth is hidden in the imagination you draw upon to face everyday challenges. It is in the passion for what you do and in the intelligence with which you exploit your own capacities and accept your own limits.
Life isn’t an easy game to play, it calls for earnestness and good spirits, which are two natural gifts I have, and have been training, for some time.
LITTLE MEN
In 1980, Carlo, Carlo Jr., Edoardo, and I had all left Paris to settle down in Switzerland, where we would be safer and could live more peacefully. Whenever I wasn’t away for work I took care of the children as much as I could, I’d pick them up at school, supervise their schoolwork and other activities, and watch admiringly as their talents blossomed.
Carlo Jr. had started playing the piano at the age of nine and gave himself heart and soul to music. In long conversations with his father, who had a unique instinct for discerning a person’s abilities and natural talents, he had started imagining his future.
“Why don’t you think about becoming an orchestra conductor?” his father had suggested. “It’s a more complex and complete approach to the music you love so much . . .”
As always, his father was right. Years later, after graduating from Pepperdine’s Seaver College and earning an M.A. from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, Carlo Jr. indeed attended an orchestra directing seminar in Connecticut, which paved the way for his career, after further study at UCLA and the Vienna Music Academy.
Edoardo, instead, had been dreaming of cinema ever since he was a child. We tried to leave him free to decide, encouraging him without being pushy. Precisely because he was following in his father’s footsteps it was important that he be given time to understand the realities of his vocation.
In 1984 the two of us appeared together in a road movie called Aurora. Edoardo was eleven, I was fifty on the nose. He played a blind child, I his mother, who traveled up and down Italy telling all her past lovers that he was their son so that she could gather the money she needed for the surgery that would restore his eyesight.
Edoardo’s role wasn’t at all easy and I, as a mother and actress, tried to give him some advice.
“Edo, do you think we should talk? It might help . . .”
But he, with the presumption that comes naturally at that age, answered drily, almost resentfully: “No, thanks. I can take care of myself.”
I left him alone, but kept an eye on him from a distance.
It didn’t take long for him to come back to me, after running up against the first obstacles.
“Mamma, you were right. I can’t do it without you, I need your help . . .”
I welcomed him with a smile, and took him for a little walk.
“You have to forget you’re blind, Edoardo, you just have to be blind, that’s all.”
In the days that followed we went over his part, we tried to understand how he should move, how a child who can’t see feels. He overcame his difficulty, did a good job, and won the Young Artist Award. He would always treasure the experience and keep it in mind when he was on the other side of the movie camera.
Adolescence is like that—it swings from being big to being little, from depending on others to being independent, between leaving and wanting to come back. As I busied myself in my children’s everyday lives, I suddenly realized they’d grown.
“Now what am I going to do?” I asked myself. “What am I going to do now that they don’t need me anymore?”
I knew it wasn’t completely true that they no longer would need me, but I need
ed to change my pace, to adjust the balance in the life that had guided us until then. After having taken care of them, down to the smallest details in their lives, the moment had come for me to watch them from the shore as they swam out to sea. It was a sensitive time, one that every parent goes through, one of satisfaction and nostalgia. Mothers will always be mothers, but they have to allow their children to choose a path for themselves.
Carlo Jr. left for Aiglon College, an English boarding school in Switzerland. When the time came for him to go to college, he chose a school in California. So Carlo and I moved to our ranch, La Concordia, in Hidden Valley, near LA, where we all had been spending our summers. It was a passage in our life together, an oasis of serenity where we could stop to ponder just how far we’d gotten, and where we wanted to go. Edoardo was also accepted at Aiglon and would join us for vacations, for which we’d often return to Europe. Although we lived far apart, we loved each other with the same love as always, and we’d often gather together to give one another support, happiness, and fun.
Michael Jackson’s ranch was right next to ours. Our kids couldn’t wait to meet him, and they did everything they could think of to make it happen. Finally, one morning Michael phoned to invite us to lunch and we happily accepted.
With his cascade of curls, wearing dark sunglasses and a black hat, he gave us a royal welcome.
For lunch we ate some delicious shrimp, then, with his delicate and somewhat childlike bashfulness, Michael showed us around his mansion, which was really an immense imaginative amusement park. It was like being at Disney World. Carlo Jr. and Edoardo couldn’t believe their eyes—they were deliriously happy. And to make sure they weren’t disappointed, Michael crowned the visit by taking them to his rehearsal room and improvising a legendary moonwalk just for them.
The boys lived between Europe and California, their lives filled with music, cinema, literature. I continued to work, but I had become selective and would only accept parts I was sure about. At ease in my maturity, I could look at younger women not with envy, but with a tender understanding and indulgence.
Each stage in life brings with it its whims and its pitfalls. When you’re thirty you’re young and insecure, when you’re forty you’re strong and often tired, at fifty you’re wise, and maybe somewhat wistful. And when you approach eighty you often yearn to start over again from scratch. You’re reborn in your memories, and you fall in love with the future.
If my age today doesn’t frighten me, it’s thanks to my children. Ever since I became a mother I have led a forward-looking life, and I continue to do so today, following both my own and their passions. You never stop learning. Everything depends on self-knowledge and self-love.
MOTHERS
After I became a mother, I was asked to play the role of a mother more often. Not that I hadn’t before, but as a mother, I brought with me to the set all the range of emotions that Carlo Jr. and Edoardo had kindled in me.
The most intense of such roles was the one I played for Mamma Lucia, a movie made for TV aired on Canale 5 (Channel 5) in 1988. The story was adapted from The Fortunate Pilgrim, a novel by the great Mario Puzo, who wrote The Godfather. At my side was John Turturro, who plays Larry, my eldest son. An Italian-American, John was perfect for the part, and in time his ties to Italy grew even stronger. (It should come as no surprise that he chose the title Passion for a documentary on Neapolitan music, released in 2010, which was quite successful.)
Anna Strasberg, Lee’s widow, was also a member of the cast for The Fortunate Pilgrim. A good friend, she had welcomed Carlo Jr.’s and Edoardo’s first steps in the world of art at the world-renowned Actor’s Studio, which she’d inherited from her husband. We’d spent a lot of time together during the long periods we lived in the United States, even before she moved there permanently. When we were at the ranch, I’d take the boys to the Studio on Santa Monica Boulevard, to pass the time in the afternoons, and also to see if anything in our business might interest them. They played and acted in small improvised performances under Anna’s knowing guidance. Besides having fun, they also built up important experiences for their future careers.
When organization is at its best, the longer periods of time involved in television, as compared with cinema, make it possible to really recreate an environment, a wholly genuine atmosphere. The Fortunate Pilgrim is set in New York’s Little Italy in the early twentieth century, reconstructed in Yugoslavia, a country soon to be devastated by war. In this neighborhood, in the city but also somewhat apart from it, lives Lucia. Independent and courageous, twice widowed, she struggles each and every day to raise her five children “the way she says they should be.”
In one of the scenes, John Turturro takes a bath in a tub. I, in the role of his mother, was standing at the window lost in my sad thoughts. During the shooting, I turned around suddenly, as called for by the script, and John was standing in front of me stark naked. I was flabbergasted! I don’t know whether it was an accident, or a lack of modesty, but such things usually didn’t happen. I instantly turned back around to give him a chance to cover himself, wondering to myself about male vanity.
Lucia pursues her dream, which was once an Italian dream, and is now becoming an American one. On Tenth Street, bisected by the tracks of a steam engine that invades the scene by puffing out tension from start to finish, Lucia ages and her children become men and women. She risks and eventually loses almost everything and yet, in keeping with her nature, stays hopeful, managing to preserve the sense of family, gathering everyone together on Long Island, in a clean white house where she can nurture her desire for a new life and preserve the memories of her loved ones.
One of Lucia’s children, her kindest and most vulnerable son, kills himself. In a terrible coincidence, while we were shooting a scene with coffins that are understood to hold the bodies of American soldiers killed in the war, a young man who was passing by the studio outside pulled out a gun and shot himself. It was terribly tragic, and left us speechless, with a terrible weight on our hearts.
The Fortunate Pilgrim is an intense and moving film. When the plot of a movie is the work of a great writer, as in the case of this movie, the filming can be easier and it is likelier to be a hit. And when you have a soundtrack based on a song composed by a great singer-songwriter like Lucio Dalla, success is guaranteed.
One morning, a few months before the shooting was to begin, I was in the car with Edoardo who, as he always did, was singing softly. He had always liked to sing, and was good at it. Maybe he takes after his Zia Maria.
“Qui dove il mare luccica e tira forte il vento” (Here, where the sea shines and the wind howls . . .).
“What are you singing?” I asked him, curious.
“Te voglio bene assaje, ma tanto tanto bene, sai” (I love you very much, very, very much, you know), he crooned with a wide grin, fully aware of the fact that he was amazing me with his rendering of the Neapolitan song, “Caruso,” by Lucio Dalla.
That was when I fell in love with Lucio Dalla. Later, when Carlo and I discussed the soundtrack for The Fortunate Pilgrim, I was adamant: “We absolutely have to use Lucio Dalla’s song ‘Caruso,’ it’s perfect!”
A tribute to the legendary tenor, Enrico Caruso, the song is about the longings of a dying man. Caruso himself had had a hard life and in the end died in the Hotel Vesuvio in Naples.
Carlo listened to it and was just as enthusiastic as I was. But as usual, never satisfied, he gave it his own special touch, and chose the best possible musician, the most suited to the genre and atmosphere of the movie—none other than Luciano Pavarotti.
Pavarotti knew well how to interpret this song to fit the ancient and very touching breadth of this grand family saga.
While he was cutting the record, one morning Luciano phoned me.
“Sophia, I have a confession to make . . .”
“What is it?” I answered, noticing his embarrassment.
“I’m so sorry but I have to stop here . . .”
“Wha
t are you saying, Luciano? Why, what’s wrong?”
“I’m here singing this song, but I’ll never sing it the way Lucio Dalla does, ever!”
I was taken aback and moved by his humility, his insecurity. I played all my cards to try to convince him, to encourage him: “How can you say that, Luciano, with that voice of yours . . . Dalla sings his own version, which you can’t and mustn’t imitate. You’ll do your own, adding to it the way you feel, the person you are . . .”
Only truly great people nurture doubts about themselves. And it is precisely when they have doubts that they can outperform themselves and become even greater.
Just a few years before, I had made Courage, the story of a woman who, all by herself, fights to tear her children away from drug use, exposing a billion-dollar narcotics ring. The TV movie, which was aired on Canale 5 in 1987, was inspired by the real-life story of Martha Torres, a Latin American mother who had immigrated to Queens and who, for the love of her children, infiltrated the ring and succeeded in bringing fourteen Colombian drug dealers to trial. Unfortunately, for security reasons, I wasn’t able to meet with her, but I tried to do justice to the character, offering her all the love that I usually reserved for my own children. It was a kind of love that, in some mysterious way, encompassed all the children of the world. Any mother will understand what I mean.
I had experienced deeply how motherly love can spread when I was sent to Africa by the United Nations as a goodwill ambassador during the Somali crisis. The unspeakable suffering and poverty that I saw from close up were shattering. I really would have liked to gather all those children in my arms, feed them, and give them love, but all I could do was play my very small part, a necessary one that I hoped might alleviate someone’s pain even if for just a moment.