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Created Jul 19, 2015 08:40PM PST • Edited Nov 09, 2019 06:33AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Great 4.0

   Triple helpings of Sophia Loren & Marcello Mastroianni make Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow a triplo trattare of sexy Italian comedy. 1963’s Best Foreign Language Oscar-winner is a primo classico movie.

   It’s like watching three 40-minute TV episodes performed by all-time great moviestars – at their peak.

   A comedy anthology, it features Sophia & Marcello in different roles in each of the three shorts, yet always in an intimate relationship. Each short is named after Sophia’s character. She was an ideal 29, Marcello 39.

   • Adelina of Naples: Sophia is a prolific mother too horny for her husband, played by Marcello.
   • Anna of Milan: Sophia’s dressed by Dior as the wife of a mega-rich guy, with Marcello her lover.
   • Mara of Rome: Sophia’s a happy hooker, with Marcello her wealthy, powerful, neurotic client.

   I like Adelina of Naples best. The craziness starts small and then just keeps growing as Sophia Loren keeps having more children. The other cigarette salesladies harassing Marcello Mastroianni is priceless satire.

   Sophia wasn’t married to Carlo Ponti at the time, their marriage having been annulled the previous year due to the fact that he wasn’t divorced yet from his first wife. He produced the movie anyway, including La Loren’s famous striptease memorialized in the nearby clip. Think he was on set? That’s a confident man.

   Legendary director Vittorio De Sica made an even better sex comedy – Marriage Italian Style – with Sophia Loren & Marcello Mastroianni the following year. De Sica had become famous fifteen years earlier for making one of the best dramatic films of all time – The Bicycle Thief. But man could he do comedy.

   His movie is as much about the street scenes as the story, with entire cities connected in Italian Social Media, circa 1963. Talking, out loud, a lot. It’s all so wonderfully Italian: hands on hips, fists thrown in air.

   Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow remains as fresh today as in ’63, yet is more interesting now than ever.

4. Acting

   Really Great 4.5

   Sophia Loren carries the movie.

   She’s incandescent as three strongly feminine women: Adelina the wife & mother / Anna the rich bitch / Mara the happy hooker. She was 29 and at her peak superstardom, the most glamorous woman in the world. Yet she had a freshness to her, a sense that she knew herself and was happy being Sophia Loren, moviestar. She clearly felt comfortable stripping, protected by her once-and-future husband, producer Carlo Ponti.

   Marcello Mastroianni plays off her well.

   A grand movistar in his own right, Mastroianni nonetheless plays second banana to the fantastic Loren. Thus it’s no surprise that he ably pulls off an initially virile man of the house, a self-doubting cad and a horny dog responding to her every move.

   Episode Specific Cast

   Adelina of Naples

   • Aldo Giuffrè as Mastroianni’s friend who gets asked to do something overwhelming
   • Agostino Salvietti – Dr. Verace
   • Lino Mattera – Amedeo Scapece
   • Tecla Scarano – Verace’s sister
   • Silvia Monelli – Elivira Nardella
   • Carlo Croccolo – Auctioneer
   • Pasquale Cennamo – Chief Police
   • Antonio Cianci

   Anna of Milan

   • Armando Trovajoli – Giorgio Ferrario

   Mara of Rome

   • Gianni Ridolfi as a young priest taken with Sophia Loren, the working-girl next door
   • Tina Pica & Gennaro Di Gregorio as his disapproving grandmother & grandfather

5. Male Stars Perfect 5.0

6. Female Stars Perfect 5.0

7. Female Costars Great 4.0

8. Male Costars Great 4.0

10. Film

    Great 4.0

    Vittorio De Sica is Italian film personified. Never mind that he didn’t write Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow or star in it. His film – originally titled Ieri, Oggi, Domani – is a telescoping lens into early 60s Italy. Just the apartment decorations are amazing, let alone the ubiquity of the Church, from nuns in prison to the Catholic store.

11. Direction Great 4.0

12. Play Good 3.0

13. Music Great 4.0

14. Visuals Perfect 5.0
15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 1.9

    Sexier than anything else, it’s a very enjoyable risqué. To wit, Sophia Loren as Adelina of Naples reaches in to pull out her breast for her nursing child and a whole Jeep full of cops turn their heads.

    A paean to traditional marriage, heteronormative style: Got a problem with that? Not me.

17. Sex Titillating 2.5

18. Violence Gentle 1.3

19. Rudeness Salty 1.8

21. Reality

    Glib 1.7

22. Circumstantial Surreal 2.5

23. Biological Glib 1.5

24. Physical Natural 1.0