The dramatic cut from the end of the bombastic newsreel to the quiet inner courtyard of a Rome apartment building is stark. A huge Nazi flag is being hung and we can just barely make out the red surrounding the swastika. Despite the quietude of the surroundings, the image is stark and immediately puts the viewer on edge. The camera slowly makes its way around the complex, like a slow-motion version of the opening to Rear Window (1954). Finally, it rests on a window where a mother, Antonietta (Sophia Loren), starts the day, waking all six of her children and her husband. They are all preparing to attend the rallies and parades of the day while she stays at home and does her chores. During the course of this, her pet myna bird flies out the window and, fortunately, lands near the window of another tenant, one who happens to be home, despite everyone else being gone. It is Gabriele (Marcello Mastroianni), sitting at his desk, neatly addressing envelopes before throwing them all to the floor in frustration. He eyes a gun on his desk and it seems clear he intends to use it. Just then, Antonietta knocks on his door, hoping to use his apartment to get her bird back.
Both of them are clearly lonely and their awkward small talk seems to make them both uncomfortable but only because it seems clear they would rather engage more deeply. Eventually, after retrieving the bird, she leaves but he visits her shortly after. The two form a bond that will reveal unexpected secrets. A neighbor tells Antonietta to stay away from him, that he was a radio announcer but was fired because he was an anti-fascist. Antonietta discovers the truth when she finds herself attracted to him, only to be rebuffed because he is gay. It's why he was fired and why, it is intimated, this will be his last free day. The day Adolph Hitler visits Rome.
A Special Day received widespread praise upon its release and has only grown in stature over time. It ponders the role of fascism in the breakdown of individualism and how easily accepted it is. Antonietta boasts that she has six children and if she just gets one more, her family will get a bonus for having so many. By the end, she will have that one more on the way but not from her husband. She will have it from a man whose legacy will live on in the seventh offspring of a woman who longs to break free from the constrains of an oppressive society.
Director and writer Ettore Scola and co-writer Ruggero Maccari employ some rather obvious symbolism at times (the bird breaking free of its cage only to be lured back in is a pretty big one early on) and the movie does have a tendency to overplay the contrast between the historic visit and the two neighbors connecting. But that's what a lot of great art does, take the obvious connections and investigate them intimately, in sometimes surprising ways. Scola and Maccari do a wonderful job of exploring fascism by means of breaking down its effects on two anonymous individuals.
One of the biggest stars of the film is the cinematography of celebrated cinematographer Pasqualino De Santis. The desaturation works brilliantly, giving us a world stripped of its life, its vitality, and suppressing every instinct that would reintroduce it. But the movements are just as important and his camera takes its time, gliding along the windows, following the actors in unbroken long takes, and employing deep focus photography to keep characters a courtyard apart in focus in the same frame. It's a brilliant achievement, and one of the best photographed movies of the seventies.
Finally, superstars Marcello Mastroianni and Sophia Loren find a way, almost impossibly, to deglamorize themselves. Loren, especially, looks nothing like the international beauty of the silver screen but a tired, exhausted, and overworked woman, looking for something, anything, from her life. Mastroianni, playing completely against type, garnered an Oscar nomination for his superb turn as a man who simply cannot, and will not, hide who he is.
A Special Day won several festival awards but not Cannes and it didn't get the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Too bad, it deserved it. Director Scola gave cinema one of the best ruminations on fascism of the seventies and it only becomes more powerful, and more important, with each passing year.
Director: Ettore Scola Screenplay: Ettore Scola, Ruggero Maccari Producer: Carlo Ponti Music: Armando Trovaioli Cinematography: Pasqualino De Santis Film Editor: Raimondo Crociani Art Director: Luciano Ricceri Cast: Sophia Loren (Antonietta), Marcello Mastroianni (Gabriele), John Vernon (Emanuele, the husband of Antonietta), Françoise Berd (Caretaker), Patrizia Basso (Romana), Tiziano De Persio (Arnaldo), Maurizio Di Paolantonio (Fabio), Antonio Garibaldi (Littorio), Vittorio Guerrieri (Umberto), Alessandra Mussolini (Maria Luisa), Nicole Magny (Officer's Daughter)
By Greg Ferrara
