Italian screen goddess Sophia Loren, one of the most beloved and recognisable figures in the international film world, has made over 100 films in her 50-year career. In Vittorio De Sica’s ode to complicated love, Marriage Italian Style, the formidable Loren plays Filumena, a penniless prostitute, who meets the handsome and successful Domenico (Loren’s frequent co-star Marcello Mastroianni) in Naples during World War II, sparking a passionate affair that spans two decades.
Director: Vittorio De Sica
Born in 1901, Vittorio De Sica was a leading figure in the neorealist movement. Starting out as an actor, by the late 1920s he was successful in the Italian theatre and light comedy movies. Turning to directing in 1940, four of his films won Academy Awards: Shoeshine (1946) and Bicycle Thieves (1948) which won special Oscars before the foreign film category was established, plus Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (1963) and The Garden of the Finzi Continis (1970) which won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. His final film before his death in 1974 was A Brief Vacation (1973).