Cocteau's one-woman play, La Voix Humaine, debuted in 1930. Set in Paris, it portrays a woman on a telephone call, Angela, who rides an emotional roller coaster and mental breakdown as she learns from the man she loves that he is leaving her for another woman.
When Sophia Loren saw Anna Magnani inhabit the role in Roberto Rossellini's 1948 film version, L'amour, the 14-year-old Sophia decided on the spot that she would become an actress. More than sixty years later, Loren felt the time was right to tackle the role herself. As she told the Los Angeles Times: "It is a story you can do when you reach a certain age because it's about an older woman...who is really almost at the end of her life. I always wanted to do it. When I reached my certain age, I said to my son, 'Why don't we start working on this piece?' I think it's a work of art."
Her son, Edoardo Ponti, was then 39 and had directed a few short films and features, including one that starred his mother, Between Strangers (2002). He wrote the screenplay for Human Voice with Erri De Luca, changing the setting from 1930 Paris to 1950 Naples, and shot it in 2013. Ponti later explained that he and his cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto (Brokeback Mountain [2005], Argo [2012], The Wolf of Wall Street [2013], The Homesman [2014]) chose their lenses and camera moves to try and make the film feel as if it had been made in 1950. "But at the same time, we gave it an edge to keep it contemporary."
Mother and son rehearsed for six weeks before the shoot, "talking about every line, every gesture," said Ponti. "I told her if we didn't rehearse, we'd hit the same emotional notes over and over again." Ponti later told The New Yorker, "I kept telling [her], 'If you are too emotional, you are going to turn him off. He is not going to want to come back. Nobody wants to come back to a woman who is in pain, who is crying.'
"My mother has never used the Stanislavski technique," Ponti explained. "What Neapolitans do is they tap into the collective unconscious. It's very personal, it's very detailed, and it's very universal. I think that's why people relate to Sophia Loren."
Loren declared that being directed by Ponti in this personally significant work "was the joy of my life.... At the end of the final take, Edoardo came into the room; I embraced him, and I cried for half an hour. He was crying, too."
"I am always moved with my mom," chimed in Ponti.
Loren received a special prize at the 2014 David Di Donatello awards for her performance in this film.
In addition to the anthology movie L'amore, Cocteau's play was also the basis for a 1966 TV version (really a televised play) starring Ingrid Bergman and directed by Ted Kotcheff, and it has been turned into an opera.
By Jeremy Arnold
SOURCES:
Gary Baum, "Sophia Loren on Her Comeback," The Hollywood Reporter, June 6, 2014
Susan King, "Sophia Loren Calls AFI Fest honor 'this wonderful prize,'" Los Angeles Times, Nov. 12, 2014
Lee Siegel, "Mama's Boy," The New Yorker, May 5, 2014
