A Special Day (1977)

Original title

Una giornata particolare

Directed by

Ettore Scola

Genre

drama film, LGBTQ-related film

Country

Italy, Canada

Runtime

1h 45m

Rated

NR

Rating

8.1 of 10 from 773 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

Two neighbors in 1938 Rome stay behind on the day Hitler visits Mussolini. One is a housewife stuck in a lonely marriage. The other is a neighbor hiding his homosexuality from the fascist authorities.

melancholicintimateslow-burntensebittersweetgroundedreflectivequiet

What happens

A Special Day (Italian: Una giornata particolare) is a 1977 period drama film directed and co-written by Ettore Scola, produced by Carlo Ponti, and starring Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni. Set in Rome in 1938, its narrative follows a housewife (Loren) and her neighbor (Mastroianni) who stay home the day Adolf Hitler visits Benito Mussolini. Themes addressed in the film include gender roles, fascism, and the persecution of homosexuals under the Mussolini regime. An Italian-Canadian co-production, the film premiered at the 1977 Cannes Film Festival. It earned several accolades and nominations, including David di Donatello Awards for Best Director (Scola) and Best Actress (Loren), a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film, and two Oscar nominations, for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Actor (Mastroianni). In 2008, the film was included on the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage’s 100 Italian films to be saved, a list of 100 films that "have changed the collective memory of the country between 1942 and 1978." (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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