Ettore Scola

A Special Day

A Special Day

Italian cinema dream team Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni are cast against glamorous type and deliver two of the finest performances of their careers in this moving, quietly subversive drama from Ettore Scola. Though it’s set in Rome on the historic day in 1938 when Benito Mussolini and the city first rolled out the red carpet for Adolf Hitler, the film takes place entirely in a working-class apartment building, where an unexpected friendship blossoms between a pair of people who haven’t joined the festivities: a conservative housewife and mother tending to her domestic duties and a liberal radio broadcaster awaiting deportation. Scola paints an exquisite portrait in muted tones, a story of two individuals helpless in the face of Fascism’s rise.

Film Info

  • Italy
  • 1977
  • 107 minutes
  • Color
  • 1.85:1
  • Italian
  • Spine #778

Special Features

  • New, restored 4K digital transfer, supervised by director Ettore Scola, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
  • Human Voice, a 2014 short film starring Sophia Loren and directed by Edoardo Ponti
  • New interviews with Scola and Loren
  • Two 1977 episodes of The Dick Cavett Show featuring Loren and actor Marcello Mastroianni
  • Trailer
  • New English subtitle translation
  • PLUS: An essay by critic Deborah Young

    New cover by F. Ron Miller

Purchase Options

Special Features

  • New, restored 4K digital transfer, supervised by director Ettore Scola, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
  • Human Voice, a 2014 short film starring Sophia Loren and directed by Edoardo Ponti
  • New interviews with Scola and Loren
  • Two 1977 episodes of The Dick Cavett Show featuring Loren and actor Marcello Mastroianni
  • Trailer
  • New English subtitle translation
  • PLUS: An essay by critic Deborah Young

    New cover by F. Ron Miller
A Special Day
Cast
Sophia Loren
Antonietta
Marcello Mastroianni
Gabriele
John Vernon
Antonietta’s husband
Françoise Berd
Caretaker
Credits
Director
Ettore Scola
Written by
Ettore Scola
Written by
Ruggero Maccari
Produced by
Carlo Ponti
Cinematography
Pasqualino De Santis
Music
Armando Trovajoli
Editing
Raimondo Crociani
Production and set design by
Luciano Ricceri
Costume design
Enrico Sabbatini

Current

Sophia Loren on Working with Marcello Mastroianni
Sophia Loren on Working with Marcello Mastroianni
Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. Add to that list of great on-screen duos the Italian movie legends Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni, who appeared in more than ten films together. Their 1977 film, A Special Da…
A Special Day: Small Victories
A Special Day: Small Victories

Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni are cast against type—and funnyman director Ettore Scola gets serious—in this humane drama set in Fascist Italy.


By Deborah Young

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Two legends of Italian cinema share the screen in Ettore Scola’s 1977 drama A Special Day, screening at Omaha’s Film Streams.

Remembering Ettore Scola
Remembering Ettore Scola
Last week, we were saddened to learn of the passing, at the age of eighty-four, of the beloved Italian writer and director Ettore Scola. The filmmaker was a luminary of Italian cinema for more than half a century, and his body of work has left an ind…