A Special Day

Ettore Scola’s Una giornata particolare (A Special Day) begins with newsreel footage of Hitler’s official visit to Rome in May 1938, followed by the highlights of the day, in which the capital’s population joyfully took part. This macro-historical sequence recounts an important episode in international relations in the 1930s. Scola himself lived through the event and drew on some of his memories to write the screenplay with Ruggero Maccari and Maurizio Costanzo: "I was a seven-year-old child and, like all Italian children, I was one of the sons of the she-wolf who marched down Via dei Fiori Imperiali. I remembered the courtyard of the building where I lived, with all the people leaving to attend the ceremony, I remembered seeing Hitler" (interview with Jacques Siclier; Le Monde). The rest of the film takes place at a micro-historical level. It recounts the encounter, under the suspicious eye of the concierge, of Antonietta Tiberi (Sophia Loren), a married woman, and Gabriele (Marcello Mastroianni), a homosexual dandy. The three characters are the only ones who are not attending the parade organised in honour of the Führer, remain in their flats. French critics praised the film’s exceptional quality. For Jean De Baroncelli, "rarely has such a powerful film been made on everyday fascism, on the subjugation to which a totalitarian regime subjects individuals, on the numbing of minds caused by any ideology imposed by force or simply by the systematic use of mass media" (Jean De Baroncelli, Le Monde). (Aurélien Portelli; Il était une fois le cinéma)