Una giornata particolare / A Special Day (1977)

The film is set during the late 1930s: the occasion is the meeting between Mussolini and Hitler in Rome. Left alone in her tenement home when her fascist husband runs off to attend the historic event, Sophia Loren strikes up a friendship with her mysterious neighbor Mastroianni. As the day segues into night, Loren and Mastroianni develop a very special relationship that will radically alter both of their outlooks on life.

IMDB 8.1/10 from 6358 users

Director: Ettore Scola
Writer: Ruggero Maccari (screenplay), Ettore Scola (screenplay), Maurizio Costanzo (collaboration)
Actors: Sophia Loren, Marcello Mastroianni, John Vernon, Françoise Berd
Rated: NOT RATED
Runtime: 107 min

The special day is that of the meeting of Antonietta and Gabriele, short elegy of a friendship, but lived with the intensity of a great love.

The special day is May 6 1938, which sees all of Rome celebrating another meeting between the two dictators, Hitler and Mussolini. At its full consent to a regime that would soon lead the country to disaster, the buildings of Rome are emptied as anthills for the gathering; excited all respond to the call and run the Roman Forum to the big parade in honor of Hitler.

Even the building of the Roman suburbs where they live Antonietta and Gabriele is empty, but the two of them, for different reasons, stay at home, away from the clamor of rejoicing. The accidental escape of the blackbird Antoinette pushes it out of the safe haven home to venture into an unknown space: you have to knock on the door of his next-door neighbor, to retrieve the bird. So the encounter with the reserved Gabriel, so begins a special day for both, made of shy confidences and revelations of dreams ever cast.

Antoinette (Loren) is the classic wife "fascist", the servant of a narrow-minded and ignorant husband and six children blindly indoctrinated in their uniforms regimen. Her husband, a black shirt, clerk to the Ministry of East Africa, is overbearing and faithless man, a peasant incapable of even a single gesture of tenderness towards his female partner. Obedient to the dictates of manhood daring and fascist misogyny, which he considered the woman only as a broodmare offspring and domestic man, forcing his wife to sfornargli children, of which I boast with pride.

One imagines, Antoinette, relating since childhood with the arrogance "manly" of an authoritarian father, even before that of her husband. It grows so convinced that "genius is one man" and confided to Gabriel: "So do I. I feel considered less than zero … my husband does not speak with me, order, by day and by night." This was the hypocrisy of marriage fascist, encouraged in every way to achieve the objectives of the demographic campaign announced in 1927 ("All the organs of the party work.

Should therefore work even those genitals," said the hierarch Achille Starace). Antoinette luckily for him is "prolific mother," perfect in the role of dutiful wife and caring mother, but the sadness in his eyes and the tone of resigned gestures denounce an inner pain and an ancient resignation: sacrifice away of broken dreams, desires unfulfilled, of hopes dashed.

This woman, sloppy depressed housewife in a day of "freedom from family," knows Gabriel (Mastroianni).

He is homosexual, fired by EIAR, where he worked as an announcer, because affected by the "abominable vice" and sentenced to confinement in a remote corner of Sardinia. Between the two, after a moment of mutual distrust, comes a spontaneous affection and unusual, able to bridge their different solitudes even just for a day.
Antonietta and Gabriele share the same oppression, the daughter of "manhood fascist" who despises the one hand, indeed denies homosexuality, on the other severely punished, as well as determines the fate of the wives-mothers, subservient to men macho, consenting that husbands sfoghino their male youth in brothels, rather than being abandoned by a lover fixed.

Gabriel is desperate and the arrival of Antoinette saves him from about suicide. Antoinette was fascinated by this man gentle and kind, even bizarre. At first seem incompatible, intellectual and critical him, ignorant and naive her. After an initial approach Gabriele invites himself for a coffee, happy Antoinette (back to looking good with typically feminine affectation) accepts: told him about the family, proudly displays the album that contains the photos and articles on the leader, fair to be a fascist. Do not immediately understand the skepticism of Gabriel, some of his jokes. "Are you single? Then you pay the tax on celibacy" "Yeah, as if loneliness were a wealth …". Then, after the warning of the door whisperer, he discovers that Gabriel is considered by the Party a defeatist and a subversive, "I do not think that the Tenant is fascist, fascism is, if anything, anti-Tenant" confesses Gabriele bitterness.

Now the ice is broken and the two begin a game of confidences and confessions that will lead them to a confrontation so intense, as dramatic, but especially to mirror each other in that of another unfortunate marginalization. The municipality disenchantment, the mutual acceptance devoid of false prejudices, unites them in a moment of genuine love.
In the evening Antoinette back to being the perfect housewife fascist, but now aware of his destiny, unable to find the courage to refuse the advances of her husband quietly, only interested in ingravidarla the seventh son to get the prize check of the regime. Meanwhile, Gabriel is taken by the police to be conducted in confinement.

The two meetings, the intimate relationship between the characters and the historical parallels between the two dictators to carry the entire film: the background sound to the personal story is in fact the authentic commentary of Hitler's visit, with commentary from the popular voice of fascism Guido Notari, recognizable in the monotonous tone and rhetoric. The chronicle of the event radio, soundtrack of the day especially the two outcasts, does nothing but intensify their loss, the strangeness to a system that rejects them and at the same time trying to absorb them.

Considered by many critics as the best film by Ettore Scola, written together with Maurizio Costanzo, and Ruggero Maccari, "A Special Day" does not cover cynical and sarcastic tone of his other films of the director ("Commissioner Pepe", "We had so loved you "), but does not mind a slight irony, while retaining a narrative structure delicate and subdued. Ettore Scola has here abandoned the tones of the Italian comedy, of which he was skilled master, for a twilight neorealism, sublime in the evocative photograph from the faded colors and the reconstruction of an anonymous inner class district.
He was nominated for an Oscar but did not win. Had, however, other deserved acknowledgments, thanks also to the sensitive interpretation of the two actors. Loren, while embodying the role of commoner on other occasions expressed here agrees to imbruttirsi, to appear in slippers and without makeup, in a dramatic proof that earned her the David di Donatello. Pure Mastroianni abandons the classic role of Latin lover, and for the first time plays a homosexual with the spontaneity of interpretation that is proper, giving an emotional intensity to his role as unforgettable. Both, perfectly at ease, give life to this seemingly impossible love story, fragile and poetic, sadly resigned.

The film is harshly critical of fascism, analyzing the more grotesque aspects, denouncing the policy of marginalization, which is typical of authoritarian systems, and is especially valuable to reflect on timeless themes. The pervasiveness of the fascist model of manhood, which requires a subordinate role to the woman and urges condemnation of the pederast is unfortunately still present in the resurgence of a macho mentality, misogynist and homophobic present precisely in the most advanced societies and democratic. Resurgence of intolerance forcefully rejected because, as Gabriel says sadly: "It always ends up that we adapt to the mentality of others, even when it is wrong."

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