Marriage Italian Style

Director: Vittorio De Sica
Year Released: 1964
Rating: 2.0

Chronicle of an up-and-down relationship between a wealthy businessman (Marcello Mastroianni) and a hooker (Sophia Loren) he met when she was a teenager - three kids and two decades later, he is 'forced' to marry her. The first two acts are rocky in terms of structure, as De Sica (and his screenwriters) are left resorting to choppy flashbacks to detail the dealings between the two core characters and then, at the conclusion, she has to turn to Sneaky Female Tricks to rope him in, telling him one of the kids that she had is actually is, so he has to go around and try to figure out which one it is. This is not exactly a testament to Female Empowerment, and Marcello comes across as so cold and self-absorbed one must consistently ask why she'd keep going back to him: her 'victory,' of getting a rich man to provide for her (and her kin) financially, doesn't seem to have much to do with love, and when he kisses her in the dirt it's just the script forcibly bringing them together more than mutual affection.