I think you could dress Sophia Loren in an old sack and she'd still ooze a personality and charisma that serves her really well in this heart-rending wartime story. She is the widowed "Cesira" who, with bombs falling all around them, decides it's best to get her young daughter "Rosetta" (Eleonora Brown) out of danger. Getting back to her home town of Sant'Eufemia together is a journey fraught with risk but upon their arrival at this Nazi occupied village, they begin to live what might pass for a normal life. "Cesira" even meets the romantic, if a little naive, younger "Michele" (Jean-Paul Belmondo) but as the food starts to run out and rumours of an Allied advance begin to substantiate, she decides that maybe a return to Rome is best as they are soon all targets for bombing raids. It's this return trip that exposes them to the abject horrors not just of warfare but of human nature at it's worst too. The full effects of warfare - both physical and psychological are visited on these two women as they seek safety where there is little to be had, and as the palpable sense of tension and fear builds up, Loren raises her game delivering a strong and plausible performance as a mother desperate to protect her daughter - who maybe doesn't quite appreciate the dangers they are in. Raf Vallone's "Giovanni" contributes sparingly but effectively and the whole style of Vittorio De Sica's intensely photographed photography and storytelling presents us with as gripping a tale of the ghastliness of war as I've ever seen. Not an easy watch, but a poignant one.
