#Una giornata particolare | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

Visit Blog

Explore Tumblr blogs with no restrictions, modern design and the best experience.

Fun Fact

Premium Tumblr themes are available from anywhere between $9 to $49.

#Una giornata particolare

maggiecheungs · 9 months

Text

“Meeting you, getting to know you, talking with you, spending the whole day with you—today of all days—has been very important to me...”

A Special Day (1977) dir. Ettore Scola

#a special day #una giornata particolare #ettore scola #sophia loren #marcello mastroianni #worldcinemaedit #filmauteur #filmgifs #italian movie #italian cinema #ellisgifs #queue

133 notes · View notes

thisfilmisnotyetrated · 1 year

Photo

THE CRITERION CHALLENGE 2023 — WEEK 1: RANDOM GENERATED SPINE NUMBER: #778

UNA GIORNATA PARTICOLARE/A SPECIAL DAY (dir. Ettore Scola, 1977)

#una giornata particolare #a special day #ettore scola #sophia loren #marcello mastroianni #usercriterion #cc23 #criterion challenge 2023 #*

162 notes · View notes

dweemeister · 1 month

Text

A Special Day (1977, Italy)

Two months after the Anschluss (Nazi Germany’s annexation of Austria), Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini made the most public show of their growing political relationship to date. Hitler’s arrival in Rome on May 3, 1938 and the public celebrations the next day saw the Eternal City festooned for pomp and circumstance. Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy’s military alliance was all but an inevitability, formalized the following year. None of these celebrations appear in Ettore Scola’s A Special Day (Una giornata particolare), but they help set the movie’s tenor and themes. Its two central stars, Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni, are one of the great screen duos of film (this is their seventh of eight films together). Both Loren and Mastroianni suffered in the Second World War – the former was wounded in an Allied bombing raid in Pozzuoli (near Napoli); the latter was imprisoned in but later escaped from a Nazi labor camp. Their memories of those darker days made their experiences shooting A Special Day a needed emotional release.

In interviews, Loren often cites A Special Day as one of her favorite roles and movies of her own. Viewing this for the first time, that is no surprise to yours truly. This is a remarkable film with two raw performances from Loren and Mastroianni – departing from their glamorous personas to inhabit two working class individuals on society’s edge. A Special Day also benefits from Scola’s intimate and patient direction. All while creating a space that takes the audience back to a day that sealed the fates of not only our two protagonists, but millions of other innocent lives.

In a tenement apartment complex on the morning of May 4, 1938, housewife Antonietta Taberi (Loren) prepares breakfast for her husband, Emanuele (John Vernon), and their six children. Emanuele is a committed fascist, and plans on taking their spoiled children to view the parade set to feature Hitler and Mussolini. And it appears that almost everyone in the complex is heading off to the festivities as well, save apartment custodian Pauletta (Françoise Berd) and a neighbor across the way. When the family’s myna bird accidentally escapes their apartment, Antonietta receives help from Gabriele (Mastroianni), a recently-sacked radio announcer who largely keeps to himself. Over the remainder of the morning and afternoon in both his apartment and hers, Antonietta and Gabriele – whose firing was due to his homosexuality and anti-fascist politics – reflect on their lives, the expectations hoisted upon them by others.

Scola, better known as a political satirist (1962’s Il sorpasso, 1974’s We All Loved Each Other So Much) at this time, dispenses of his comedic roots in this screenplay with Ruggero Maccari (Il sorpasso, 1965’s I Knew Her Well), and Maurizio Constanzo (1968’s The Vatican Affair). The film begins with several minutes of propagandistic archival footage hailing Hitler’s visit to Italy, its narration vociferously extoling this show of authoritarian solidarity. Through most of the film, one can hear in the distance (and over radios) the triumphant parade as it winds its way through the Roman streets. It is an omnipresent reminder both our protagonists are in a trap.

Antonietta and Gabriele bristle under societal norms. For Antonietta, there is unspoken tension with her husband. He has been philandering with other women, specifically highly-educated women – all of which feeds into Antonietta’s insecurities that she never received a proper childhood education. But despite that lack of schooling, Antonietta expresses an interest in the world outside the apartment complex – she makes her best attempt to read literature and understand the subtexts of the works she reads, and she is anything but politically apathetic. She is not merely a housewife, nor does she wish to be seen as merely a housewife. But she finds herself unable to express this to her husband, and wishes not to plunge her children’s lives into chaos. Straying from being a homemaker, at this time, would almost certainly run afoul of fascist gendered norms. Here, with wonderful assistance from makeup artist Franco Freda (1961’s Divorce Italian Style, 1972’s Avanti!), Loren sheds her stylish visage, transforming into a woman older than her age, naïvely going along with her husband’s politics, living life largely the same way day after day. She, like her costar, disappears into the role – shorn of her fiery charisma, yet retaining only a glint of her stardom in her lonely glances to the camera.

Mastroianni, so often cast as the fashionable lover, is a gay political dissident in A Special Day who alternates between amusement and melancholy. Unlike Loren’s Antonietta, Mastroianni’s Gabriele is a man who chooses to hide his politics, his homosexuality, and his very being. In 1977, there was no previous Mastroianni performance that could serve as an analogue to this. Within the confines of A Special Day, we find in Gabriele a man whose tragedy is that he has never lived to experience the fullness of his humanity – always self-censoring, self-denying, all to ensure he survives under the fascist regime. One of the final moments that Gabriele shares with Antonietta is bravura acting from both Mastroianni and Loren. It is a scene that exemplifies how Gabriele has long had to “pass” as straight, but the film nevertheless reaffirms his homosexuality.

Then and now, Italian’s traditional Catholicism or Catholic-influenced values dictates the rights of queer individuals. Though same-sex activity has been legal in Italy since 1890, there remains a lack of legal protections for LGBTQ+ Italians in many other aspects of public and private life. Under Mussolini’s fascist regime, queer Italians faced persecution and spells in prisons and labor colonies. Gay men, in particular, were seen as agents of depopulation, effeminate undesirables in a new Italian empire built in the image of Benito Mussolini’s virile machismo. A Special Day keeps Gabriele’s homosexuality under wraps via implication until an emotionally fraught scene in which Antonietta believes that he is making advances towards her.

Mastroianni was not gay. And one imagines that, in contemporary cinema, a straight actor playing a gay character might result in justified hand-wringing. This remains an open debate, but I can imagine Italian cinema (and Italian society) was not quite ready for an openly gay actor in the 1970s. The matter-of-fact presentation of his queerness ensures that Gabriele’s sexual orientation is not the primary definition of his being, as might be the case in too many lesser films, past and present. Even during and after a scene that appears to contradict his homosexuality, his characterization remains steadfast.

Cinematographer Pasqualino De Santis (1968’s Romeo and Juliet, 1981’s Three Brothers) drains most of the frame of its color. The desaturated palette half-resembles a faded photography from the early twentieth century, which sometimes have selective coloring. A Special Day’s sepia dominates the frame all but twice: the opening minutes of the archival footage (regular black-and-white) and the green and reds of the flags of Italy and Nazi Germany. As much as I am no fan of desaturated colors in cinema, A Special Day is not responsible for modern mainstream filmmakers’ tendency to favor desaturated color palettes.

Shortly after the opening archival footage, an impressive crane shot lingers outside the windows of the apartment building in the early morning until it slowly glides its way into Antonietta’s apartment, following her as she awakens her children and husband for the festivities to come. The effect is seamless, seemingly uninterrupted by cuts for four minutes (there may be a “hidden” cut in there that I did not detect), and sets the unrushed tempo of the film. De Santis’ camera is unobtrusive, capturing the ramshackle conditions of the apartments all while endowing the viewer a sense of the apartments’ layout. In addition, A Special Day’s long, unbroken takes allow the audience to reflect on the emotions and experiences shared between our two protagonists. My reservations over the colors aside, this is one of the most beautifully photographed films of its decade.

In 106 minutes, A Special Day launches into an examination of how Italian fascism impacted the lives of the nation’s most vulnerable individuals – in this case, women, political dissidents, and LGBTQ+ individuals. The film does so without resorting to sensationalism or hysterics, preferring instead measured discussion and tragic implications. Antonietta and Gabriele’s use of language and stated reservations exemplify fascism’s role in devaluing the individual in service of an ideology. A few decades removed from the end of the Italian neorealism movement, strands of neorealism are apparent across A Special Day. One sees it in the quiet desperation of Antonietta and Gabriele, the unglamorous presentation of tenement life, and the hardscrabble scenario of the film (it is just missing Italian neorealism’s penchant for green, nonprofessional actors).

Essentially a chamber piece, Ettore Scola’s A Special Day is accessible, keenly felt, beautifully shot, and wonderfully acted. Loren’s Antonietta and Mastroianni’s Gabriele truly share a special day together – a day without the rhythms of their usual lives, without the distractions of family, friends, and (most) of their acquaintances and neighbors. By film’s end, they are fully themselves in each other’s presence, relating in one another their desires crushed underneath the weight of fascism’s demands. There is no guarantee a day like this will come again, as both Antonietta and Mastroianni realize and accept. All that remains for our protagonists is survival, with moments of individual resistance so unassuming that they might be invisible to all but themselves.

My rating: 10/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. A Special Day is the one hundred and sixty-seventh feature-length or short film I have rated a ten on imdb (the 166th, 2021's Drive My Car, has not received a write-up on this blog). My interpretation of that ratings system can be found in the “Ratings system” page on my blog. Half-points are always rounded down.

For more of my reviews tagged “My Movie Odyssey”, check out the tag of the same name on my blog.

#A Special Day #Una giornata particolare #Ettore Scola #Sophia Loren #Marcello Mastroianni #John Vernon #Françoise Berd #Ruggero Maccari #Maurizio Costanzo #Pasqualino De Santis #Franco Freda #TCM #My Movie Odyssey

4 notes · View notes

frnndlcs · 11 months

Photo

Una giornata particolare, Ettore Scola, 1977

#una giornata particolare #ettore scola #a special day

7 notes · View notes

yinedemeliha · 11 months

Text

#Una giornata particolare #belki bir gün #ettore scola

9 notes · View notes

telefonamitra20anni · 11 months

Text

Io, non sono solo la dolce vita!

Io non sono solo il surrogato cinematografico di Fellini. Sono mille altre cose. Sono lo straniero oltre la porta, le notti bianche e le sue ultime lune. Sono i silenzi sorretti del volo, quella telefonata in una giornata particolare. Io Sono la crisi come in 8½ . Sono la notte tutta da vivere, per non essere mattiniero. Sono la decima vittima in una cronaca familiare, nelle pagine di una cronaca rosa, nei racconti d'estate sotto il tuo ombrellone, in una domenica d'agosto. Sono quel matrimonio all'italiana, ma del divorzio non ne ho voluto mai parlare. Io sono il nemico di mia moglie, il bell' Antonio, il casanova, il bigamo, l'assassino. Sono stato i suoi giorni d'amore, il mondo nuovo, il medico e lo stregone , la dolce vita, la rappresaglia. Sono amore e guai; però peccato che sia una canaglia per essere la "divina creatura" e quasi quasi, non ci credo. Sono il fantasma d'amore, e per qualcuno sono stato il momento più bello, come i diamanti a colazione. Sono Enrico IV ma a cavallo non ci salgo! Sono oci ciornie, ma resto allegro. Sono un piatto di maccheroni, condiviso. Sono la grande abbuffata del mio piatto preferito. Todo modo, "un prete molto cattivo" ma nella mia fede ci sono tre vite e una sola morte, e mi voglio ribellare! perché?! io, sono la febbre di vivere. Adesso, dimmelo tu, chi sono io?

#marcello mastroianni #mastroianni marcello #original photographers #film photography #mastroianni marcello gif #best actor #federico fellini #la notte #le notti bianche #la dolce vita #una giornata particolare #telefonamitra20anni #telefonami tra vent'anni #moviegifs #movies #8½

4 notes · View notes

animalsisawinmovies · 2 years

Text

mynah bird 🐦

from a special day (1977)

dir. ettore scola

Instagram Twitter Letterboxd

#mynah bird #a special day #una giornata particolare #ettore scola #sophia loren #marcello mastroianni #animals #cinema #film

17 notes · View notes

sempresera · 2 years

Text

Quello del cameriere è uno dei mestieri più mortificanti.

Ogni giorno mi ritrovo ad avere a che fare con gente che, solo perche pagano, si sentono in diritto di trattarti come un rifiuto umano senza dignità.

In quasi 4 anni ne ho viste di tutti i colori.

Gente che ti caccia via perche sei un ragazzo e vogliono la cameriera da molestare.

Gente che ordina una cosa e poi quando la porti cambiano idea dandoti dell'incompetente (prendendomi le urla del cuoco)

Gente che potrebbe chiedere le cose gentilmente ma che non fa altro che usare imperativi anche belli pesanti.

Gente che vedendoti in difficoltà per l'affluenza ti chiede le cose uno alla volta per farti perdere ancora più tempo.

Gente che ti riempie (palesemente apposta) i bicchieri fino all'orlo prima di andare via.

Gente che nonostante il divieto, fuma (minacciandoti).

Gente con tik tok a volume massimo.

Gente che nonostante il diveto di buttare carta nel cesso lo fa, tappando tutto.

Oggi mi sono fermato a parlare con una mia collega e ne abbiamo parlato, inutile dire che siamo stanchi. È triste pensare che forse le cose non cambieranno mai.

1 note · View note

koufax73 · 2 years

Text

Tōru: "Una giornata particolare" è il nuovo singolo

A 45 anni dall’uscita nelle sale del capolavoro di Ettore Scola, Tōru pubblica il suo nuovo singolo intitolato "Una Giornata Particolare"

https://open.spotify.com/album/7K6kUirZ0HWb5FJafHsNLF?si=co-83b-rQeaf_6jDJ2CdrQ A 45 anni dall’uscita nelle sale del capolavoro di Ettore Scola, Tōru pubblica il suo nuovo singolo intitolato Una Giornata Particolare, un esplicito omaggio alla pellicola italiana, con la partecipazione di Ilaria, nuova artista del roster Pulp Dischi. Il doppio singolo, prodotto e registrato da Andrea Ciacchini…

View On WordPress

#2022 #emergenti #genere musicale #ilaria #musica indipendente #singolo #spotify #streaming #Tōru #una giornata particolare #zabriskie point

0 notes

vincekris · 2 years

Photo

Una giornata particolare - Ettore Scola, 1977

https://365filmsbyauroranocte.tumblr.com/

#Una giornata particolare - Ettore Scola 1977

110 notes · View notes

sunshades · 5 months

Text

I'll say it guys if I'd been born in 15th century florence I would have fucked lorenzo de medici. Sorry

#bell.txt #guardando una giornata particolare rn and when hes like oh al contrario del fratello era intelligente ma molto brutto. and im just like #well. i still would have.

4 notes · View notes

gaysessuale · 1 year

Text

questa cosa di andare a fare le cose da solo e accettare gli inviti senza pensarci troppo mi sta portando ovunque: ho guadagnato due amicə (ciao ire ciao cal), ho visto i pinguini due volte nel giro di quattro mesi e una volta ci ho pure fatto aperitivo, vado regolarmente a vedere degli emergenti della stand up e sono riuscito a guadagnare l'autografo di Anselmi (my favourite MC my beloved Luca), ho visto Cachemire dal vivo e andrò a rivederlo a marzo, concerto di galeffi, cinema con tutti i pop corn per me e film che mi godo senza aver paura di doverne parlare dopo, Breaking Italy praticamente gratis in terza fila??? andiamo raga andiamo andiamoooo quest'anno ci prendiamo tutto

#è una giornata particolare questa e complessa dal punto di vista emotivo ma hey #sto andando da qualche parte facendo queste cose #e va meglio va sempre meglio #mi piace la libertà di scrivere nei messaggi: vado qua se volete venire #e se nessuno risponde?? ci vado lo stesso E SI VAAA

11 notes · View notes

femme-objet · 1 year

Text