La ciociara
Tags: cult

Plot synopsis:
The story centers on Cesira (Loren), a widowed Roman shopkeeper, and Rosetta (Brown), her devoutly religious twelve-year-old daughter, during World War II. To escape the Allied bombing of Rome, Cesira and her daughter flee southern Lazio for her native Ciociaria, a rural, mountainous province of central Italy. The night before they go, Cesira sleeps with Giovanni, a neighbouring coal dealer who agrees to look after her store in her absence.
After they arrive at Ciociaria, Cesira attracts the attention of a young local intellectual with communist sympathies named Michele (Jean-Paul Belmondo). Rosetta sees Michele as a father figure and develops a strong bond with him. However, Michele is eventually taken prisoner by a company of German soldiers, who hope to use him as a guide to the mountainous terrain.
Cesira decides to return to Rome once the Allied troops end German occupation. On the way home, Cesira and Rosetta are gang-raped inside a church by a group of Goumier—Moroccan soldiers of the French Army. Rosetta is traumatized, becoming detached and distant from her mother and no longer an innocent child.
When the two manage to find shelter at a neighbouring village, Rosetta disappears during the night, sending Cesira into a panic. She thinks Rosetta has gone to look for Michele, but later finds out that Michele was killed by German soldiers. Rosetta returns, having been out dancing with an older boy, who has given her silk stockings, despite her youth.
Cesira is outraged and upset, slapping and spanking Rosetta for her behavior, but Rosetta remains unresponsive, emotionally distant. When, however, Cesira informs Rosetta of Michele's death, Rosetta begins to cry like the little girl she had been prior to the rape. With her mother comforting the child, De Sica zooms out to end the film.

Review: Sophia Loren became the first player to win an Acting Oscar for a foreign language film in Two Women or La Ciociara in her native Italy.
She plays the title role here, the other woman being her daughter played in La Ciociara by Eleanora Brown.The story here is a relatively simple one, Sophia and Eleanora leave Rome due to the bombing of Rome just prior to the Allied invasion of Italy.
In fact they almost did land an army there, but Eisenhower canceled the landing at the last moment and probably saved a lot of lives doing so.But this isn't about great battles, it's about Two Women just trying to survive the ravages of war in the best way they can.
I remember back in the day La Ciociara was shown at the art house circuit and many young juveniles considered it a mark of daring to get in and see Sophia Loren expose more than her American films had done up to that time.Sophia Loren deserved that Oscar, every bit of it.
Throughout the story, she proves to be a strong woman, seasoned by pain and not having lost the fire and fight in her.Like many European films of its time, Two Women is all about the characters and the current on which they flow through the film, a realistic capsule of a time and place.
Vittorio De Sica, who made the beautifully small-scale film The Bicycle Thief, which is about a relationship between father and son, forms a companion piece with Two Women, which is about a relationship between mother and daughter.
He addresses strikingly the unbearable love between a parent and their child.Truly one of the greatest Italian films, this is an absorbing, emotional, modest journey with wonderful music; coarse, down-to-earth cinematography from the wonderful old days of gritty film prints and old school hands-on editing; incredible acting not only from Loren but from the young actress playing her daughter, who drastically transforms; and also from Jean- Paul Belmondo, who convincingly plays completely against type; and a beautifully emotional final shot.
The last 30 minutes of this movie are heartbreaking, her horror, helplessness and numbness at what has happened to her daughter are some of the most powerful moments I have seen on film.
Her performance as the widowed mother of a teen age girl in this movie that depicted the horrors of the second great war was absolutely heart-felt and perfect.
sophia loren won the oscar for best performance for a lead actress in this movie, and i beleive that she dearly deserved it.
We understand that this young mother, Cesira (VERY well deserved Academy Award winner Sophia Loren), has a kind of hard protective shell of the fiery, strong woman that today might seem to verge on being something to expect in an Italian or Spanish drama, but here is meant to be just that- a shell to guard off from the wretched horrors of a war which repeatedly she asks "will it end soon?" She also has to be strong for her thirteen year old daughter Rosetta (Eleonora Brown, excellent even if not considering it's a first performance), who still has a little innocence and admiration for those who are more good-hearted, if not as resourceful.This type as mentioned is in Michel (Jean Paul Belmondo, a curiously low-key performance considering his big hype as a suave star in France), who is a resistance fighter that Cesira and Rosetta come across while traveling away from Rome during bombing raids.
She's been through the war, right along with her daughter, and there's layers that Loren grasps that pierce through the character; De Sica knows that she's capable of reaching these very real dimensions even before she has to go full tilt into the tragedy of the rape scene in the church.
In a way, Cesira and Rosetta are in the midst of a kind of apocalyptic atmosphere, and we as the audience, even as we know where history will lead the characters, get wrapped up in the maelstrom of violence (one moment that's important is when the mother and daughter walk along a quiet road, a man on a bicycle passes, and a plane swoops down, shooting, the women duck, but the man is killed - the women look startled for just a moment, but hide it and go on their way) and with some political discourse thrown in from time to time as well (these might be the only weak spots of the film, but still very good scenes with a quick pace and sharp attention to mixing real actors and "non" actors, a slightly elevated neo-realism).
But this one strikes it hard: a state of mind in war cripples the mind.Finally, they come to the abandoned church, and the infamous scene occurs (filmed with a very effective zoom lens on Rosetta's eyes at a crucial moment, a kind of approximate exclamation point).
***SPOILERS*** Set in 1943 war torn Italy the movie "Two Women" is about a mother and daughter leaving Rome for the , what they think, safety of the countryside and going back to their little village in the hills and mountains in the Agro Pontino area just north of Rome.
Sophia Loren in a somewhat non-glamorous role as Cesira a shop owner in the Italian capital who's estranged from her husband and is, at the time that we first meet her, having an affair with local food distributor Giovanni, Ralf Vallone.
After getting to the village things are more or less peaceful, with the war just an old and bitter memory, with Cesira meeting and falling in love with the local intellectual as well as socialist young collage student Michele,Jean-Paul Belmondo, who even young Rosetta takes a strong liking to.
The almost forgotten war slowly catches up with Cesira and Rosetta and the people at the small village as the Allied forces break through the German lines and reach the outskirts of Rome.
Before this happened a squad of German soldiers entered the town and took Michele with them as a guide through the dangerous hills and valleys of the Argo Pontino.On their way to Rome the two women, Cesira & Rosetta, stop off at a bombed out church to get some rest and are later set upon by a group of French Colonial Moroccan troops.
The movie ends with Cesira getting the terrible news that her lover Michele was shot and killed by the Germans as we later see both mother and daughter alone in their small room arm in arm crying and consoling each other as the movie slowly fades to black.Sophia Loren rightfully who got an Academy Award as best actress for 1961 in the role of Cesira was both feisty as well as touching as the long suffering Italian mom.
Refugees from the bombing of Rome during World War II, Sophia Loren as Cesira, and her daughter are fleeing the city, come across relatives in the country, and encounter a harrowing fate.The feel of the film is palpable and stark, the scene and the shadows of the men as they come across these two women in the effigy of a church, is ominous and effective.
Italian shopkeeper Sophia Loren flees her war-ravaged city with her frail teenage daughter for a neighboring village to stay with relatives, but on the journey home, their lives are cruelly disrupted when the woman and her child are cornered by lusty soldiers.
The credit for this film rests squarely on the shoulders of Vittorio De Sica one of Italy's great post war directors.
Eleanora Bron was cast as the daughter.The story chronicles the life altering events of two women as they try to survive in war torn Italy.
The film was very heart wrenching and I thought De Sica brilliant, the way he kept us wondering about the mother and daughter, and the lewd and leering smirks of the men and when the rape of these woemen would occur.
"La ciociara",although it did give Sophia Loren one of her two best parts (the other being Scola's "una giornata particolare"),has undergone some reassessment;one thing for sure the neorealism was on the wane at the time,and DeSica 's best works were things of the past (so were Rosselini's).Like in France ,a new wave was rising in Italy,whose art was diametrically opposite to theirs:Fellini,Antonioni,Zurlini,Bolognini,Pasolini,et al were shaking the Italian cinema ;and although some of them -not to say all of them- began with neorealist works ("la strada" "il grido") ,now they were inventing their own aesthetic:the content took a back seat to the form("l'avventura" "la dolce vita" ).And the classic Story did not seem to matter a little bit.DeSica's style -which was so inventive during the forties and early fifties- became here a bit academic and conventional:for instance,he uses close-ups to excess;his actors,once "neorealist" to a fault (a non-professional in " Ladri di biciclette") , sometimes seem here a bit hamming it up.And Jean-Paul Belmondo is completely miscast in his part of idealist intellectual.There are good things though:the relationship Loren/daughter is moving and heartfelt;and the selfishness,the lack of solidarity of the refugees trying to save their dear life are impressive.Loren has great moments that make this work worth watching..
Cesira (Sophia Loren) flees Rome away from the allied bombing for the sake of her 13 year old daughter Rosetta (Eleonora Brown).
La Ciociara is an incredible film and an unforgettable cinema landmark, showcasing the brilliant direction of Vittorio De Sica, the dazzling talent of Sophia Loren, and the beautiful craftsmanship of Italian film.
So in general if you want to grasp all the tragedy of Ciociara you should first read a book and then it would be very ridiculous to compare it with the film where De Sica even in the most tragic moment didn't forget to set off Loren's semi-nude bust.
La Ciociara is a novel written by the immortal Alberto Moravia, who was a Communist MEP for the last dozen years of his life.His story, as interpreted by pioneer film-maker Vittorio De Sica, is told from the point of view of Cesira, an uneducated widow (Sophia Loren, in her Oscar-winning role), who inherited a grocery from her older husband.
The pair have various adventures trying to reach the Signora's home village, during which the film-makers adroitly illustrate the civil war within the European war, within the world war.Communism is represented, a trifle improbably, by Jean-Paul Belmondo, but the Parisian lothario acquits himself quite well in the role, even acting out the wish-fulfilment of the public and piling on top of Cesira to get a load of that fabulous bust and those magnetic lips, for as long as she will allow, because Cesira is a very feisty lady.The film is suffused with a love of the people, and portrays their daily life in the country affectionately, along with the disruption and misery caused by war.
In a memorable scene, a stunned young mother whose child has been killed, offers her nipple in public, saying: "Does anyone want my milk?" This is a foreboding of what is to come, for as the third reel progresses disaster befalls both Cesira and Rosetta, a story feature that has been liberally revealed all over this board, but which I will refrain from blabbing about.This film obeys all the classic rules: the heroine struggles against all odds, even total disaster, and somehow triumphs in the end, even if her victory looks pyrrhic.
Ultimately, it is not, for we know that victory will ensue and even the awful sufferings of war will be alleviated, peace will heal the wounds, and Cesira and her lovely daughter will eventually thrive.Many things combine to make this a brilliant picture: the profound political commitment of the film-makers, the genius of Moravia, the brio of Sophia Loren in her greatest part, the love of Italy and its inhabitants.
I knew the outcome of the story because of having read Miss Loren's autobiography, and at times it was unnerving knowing what was to come.On a lighter side Hollywood should re-make this film with Kathy Griffin as the mother, and in a dual role, Kathy Griffin as the daughter.
A gripping, weighty film, with an Italian women (Sophia Loren) and her 12-year-old daughter (Eleonora Brown) fleeing Rome towards the end of WWII.
What happens to the mother and her child in a bombed out church (perhaps a symbolic setting) is horrifying, but while the film has these dark elements, and people living under conditions of privation at a time when those around them were being killed randomly, it doesn't crush you with its darkness.
A moving and visually stunning film, Two Women is a story about the heartache and trials of war by director Vittorio De Sica.
As with his other movies, this director deals with vulnerable human beings, to expose the injustice of a harsh world; in this case, a widow, performed by Sophia Loren, and her daughter, Eleanora Brown.
Vittorio de Sica= neo-realism director Sophia Loren=     sex symbol Alberto Moravia=  famous up-and-coming authorThe year is 1961, and it is 13 years after bicycle thief.
But the result is a terrible minestrone of different styles, tensions, trends, to produce a schizophrenic bizzare production.There are numerous neo-realistic scenes of peasants in the Agro Pontino, of living inside the capanne with hay roofs, of getting off trains in the middle of the countryside and carrying luggage on your head the way old peasant women used to do it.But then there are intruding snippets of comedy, like the old man eyeing the breasts of Sophia Loren and turning his head away when he realizes he's been caught watching (audience laughed), and a caricaturistic portrayal of a german officer that has studied phylosophy in the Universita' di Roma that lists the ambiguities and paradoxes of italians.What is one to make of this movie?
One of the most Powerful films about war ever made & the Brilliance of Sophia Loren.
Who knows what happens to these two women, this strong/fragile mother/daughter duo after the film has ended?
But their story becomes an indelible part of one's imagination and one hopes...prays...that somehow they survive, that their mother-daughter bond of love becomes eternal and that the unimaginable horrors they experienced during the War years can somehow be eased if not erased from their lives..
A unique film about the ravages of World War II, told specifically from the point of view of an Italian woman and her young daughter.The woman is Sophia Loren, and she won the first ever Oscar given for a foreign language performance in this film.
She plays Cesira, a spitfire who is blithely indifferent to Italy's role in the war until the horrors of it hit home in deeply personal ways when she and her daughter leave bomb-addled Rome to trek across the Italian countryside to wait out the fighting.
One would be justified in thinking that Loren's character is either selfish or naive, or both, but one would have to be inhuman not to feel compassion for what happens to her and her daughter.Loren was known as nothing but a sex kitten at the time of this film's release, and director Vittorio De Sica uses this to his advantage.
The last scene in the film is powerful because it shows a mother and her daughter in close moments which center around forgiveness..
Sophia Loren is truly memorable in her Oscar winning performance of 1961.She portrays a mother trying to help her child survive World War 11 in Italy.Unable to put up with the bombings in Rome, she decides to flee with her daughter to the countryside.
This was also an unfortunate part of war.A memorable film made better by Loren's captivating performance.
Sophia Loren and her daughter's survival during the closing days of WWII in Italy.This film has all the flaws of a movie made from a book...it tries to cover 500 pages in an hour and a half....inserting seemingly random isolated things simply because they occurred in the book.As some other reviewer noted this film doesn't flow well..
this cuts out about three quarters of the actors talent and makes everything just that more artificial, stilted and jarring.The rape scene is incongruous and as another reviewer noted up to this point you wonder where is all the drama here?Over all the film is bad and the fact that Loren won an Oscar proves that gimmicks and the correct formula (lots of PC stuff) and who knows what hidden politics are what wins an Oscar not the quality of the film.DO NOT RECOMMEND.
I also liked a movie that understood that an intellectual is just another of the pilgrims on the way to Canterbury.Sophia Loren received the Best Actress Oscar here, the first time an Oscar had gone to a performance in a non-English language movie.
Dialogues are very "juicy" and they are a reflection of conditions in which people live.Sophia Loren as Cesira is a single mother and rich widow of an old merchant.
but Michele is attracted by Cesira (Sophia Loren) mother of Rosetta...As the Allies were near, and the bombardment more intense, running and frightened German Soldiers compelled Michelle by the force of arms to show them the road in order to escape through the mountains...Cesira decides to return to Rome with Rosetta...On their way, completely tired and distressed, they took shelter in a bombed-out church...
And it really is good.Sophia Loren and her angelic twelve-year-old daughter, Eleanora Brown, run a small shop in Rome during the German occupation.
A nearby explosion from an Allied bomb turns the place into a shambles and Loren decides to take her daughter and live with distant relatives in a small country town.Life isn't a bed of roses there either, but it's better than Rome, with only the occasional handful of retreating German soldiers to deal with.
The mother is Cesira, (Sophia Loren) and her daughter is Rosetta, (Eleonora Brown).
Sophia Loren is a mother who takes her daughter away from the daily bombings in Rome to her childhood home.