Noutions Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

ThrillMessage There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

frankwiener While Marcello Mastroianni and Sophia Loren may rate among the most visually appealing couples in cinematic history, the sad and profound beauty that they create here is far, far deeper than that of superficial appearance alone. Mastroianni is outstanding as Gabriele, a completely alienated and repressed gay man at the height of fascism's grip on Italian society during World War II. Loren plays Antonietta, an equally stifled housewife and mother of six who has been humiliated by her unfaithful and disrespectful husband. They live directly across from each other in a large apartment building in Rome, and they meet by chance when their neighbors depart to attend political rallies all over the city on Hitler's first visit to the Italian capital.Even as a tired, frumpy housewife who had been drained of life itself, Sophia radiates a quiet, subdued beauty that could only flow from her and no one else. Even the routine, mundane task of clearing off a kitchen table is captivating when Sophia Loren is doing it. What makes "A Special Day" so "special" is not only Sophia but Marcello in an Oscar nominated role and the superb direction by Ettore Scola. As the very intense, human relationship between two lost souls continues to develop through the "special day", the mechanized, military marches of Nazi Germany and the deafening roar of the adoring mobs in response to Hitler's public appearance assault the ears from the building caretaker's radio, providing a stark contrast of two opposing but powerful forces in the world, love and hate. As I listened to the steady, harsh brutality of the German marches and the enthusiastic reaction by the Italian multitude, I was even more startled by the alliance of these two nations, Germany and Italy, with cultural roots that seemed as far apart from one another as any two on the face of the earth. The unlikelihood of Gabriele's and Antonietta's unique friendship paled in comparison to the oddity of a pact between the likes of Italy and Germany, an alliance that was an indisputable fact of history, as difficult as that may be to believe.Although the film ends tragically, the beauty and strength of Gabriele's and Antonietta's complex relationship triumphs in its own, extraordinary way. Even in the darkness and the gloom, I was somehow left with a glimmer of hope for the pathetic, pitiful human race. I don't know exactly why.

jeffhaller I remember seeing this movie when it came out in 1977. I remember liking it but it was too slow without and real dramatic climaxes. What you see at 20 is not what you see at 60. Thank god for TCM because I couldn't find this one anywhere else. I was so surprised about how direct the movie was in telling of Gabriele's homosexuality. He is just himself, a very kind, sensitive and classy man. Antonietta so rarely gets to examine anything outside of her family, that their meeting is an adventure to her; the most mundane things are events. I remembered that when I saw the movie the lack of vibrant colors made the movie less accessible; today I got the point. Not a tearjerker, instead a profound examination of a chance meeting and how it created a powerful impact which could never have been anticipated. A knockout but really a movie for people who enjoy thinking. There is relatively little story, but listen closely and you will hear elements of 1930s Italian culture. One I can't see often. But I am grateful I took the time.

greenylennon Ettore Scola is one of the most important Italian directors. My parents and I watched together "C'eravamo tanto amati" on a summer night: we liked it, but we didn't love it as we loved "A special day". I believe Ettore Scola is pretty underrated: we often forget to remember him, maybe because his latest films were disappointing. And so, yesterday night, my mum and I sat on our sofa to enjoy this masterpiece. Writing, direction, cinematography, score and production design were sober and accurate, but the thing I liked the most was the chemistry between Loren and Mastroianni. They're both excellent actors and play the main roles of Antonietta and Gabriele. Antonietta is an housewife: married with a fanatic Fascist, she has six children but her husband wants to have another child to get a prize for the huge families. Gabriele is simply an Anti-Fascist. They spend together a special day, that special day of 1938 when Hitler came to Rome visiting Mussolini. I don't want to spoil anymore about the plot: go looking for this film!

Armand May 1938. Hitler in Italy. Preparations for historical appointment with Mussolini.Emotions , tensions and forms of self-affirmation. a empty town, a housewife and a journalist. The meeting of two different worlds. Refuge for a mother with a sad life. Short filling for a classical victim. A story about solitude and silence. About the form of of life's nooks and desire like fight's form. The great character- a book gifted in a spring's afternoon. This movie is a poem, remarkable for the art to describe the shades of common loneliness. A pleading for a ineffable relation with reality. And with your interior world. The pictures of Il Duce, the clumsiness of Antonietta, the patience and the frailty tension of Gabriele, the art of director to give the sense of script grace two great actors makes this film sublime, foretaste of subtle delicacy, a wonderful film about hypocrisy and arbitrary verdict, about essence of life and repulsiveness of any tyranny. Loren and Mastroianni are the masters of a magnificent intelligent acting. A clear masterpiece.