A Special Day

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.

"[2] On 4 May 1938, the day Hitler visits Mussolini in Rome, Antonietta, a naïve, sentimental and overworked homemaker, stays home doing her usual domestic tasks, while her fascist husband, Emanuele, and their six spoiled children take to the streets to follow a parade.

After the family's myna escapes from their apartment and flies outside Gabriele's window, Antonietta shows up at his door, asking to be let in to reach the bird.

(However, later, when her son reminds his mother of all the newspaper clippings she will have from the parade for her album collection, Antonietta's face reveals a look of slight indifference.)

She watches as her lover leaves the complex, escorted by fascist policemen, before turning off the light and retiring to bed: Her husband is waiting there for her in order to beget their seventh child, whom he wants to name Adolfo.

Antonietta is the donna madre, a mother figure who meets her feminine responsibilities in the regime by having six children, boasting one more will secure her the government bonus established for large families in 1933.

[6] Along with Il bell'Antonio and I Don't Want to Talk About It, this is one of Mastroianni's roles critiquing the Italian masculine figure as the incompetent character falling behind an evolving society.

[9] Due to the abundance of news coverage of Hitler's visit to Rome in 1938, the filmmakers had plenty of footage to write a screenplay around.

[16] The New York review states that while the celebrity of Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni would draw audiences in, they were too glamorous to play their characters, and thus, the film did not work.

[19] In 2015, The Hollywood Reporter critic Deborah Young praised it as "one of the most telling films ever made about Italian Fascism," which "suggests a path that cuts through mass-think ideologies, one that anyone can follow with a little human solidarity and courage.

Mexican theatre artists Ana Graham and Antonio Vega co-directed and performed the roles of Antonietta and Gabriele, respectively.

Gabriele ( Mastroianni ) and Antonietta ( Loren ) in her living room
Italian broadcaster Nunzio Filogamo was an inspiration for the film.