An Italian woman (Sophia Loren) conducts a desperate search for her husband (Marcello Mastroianni), a soldier considered missing in action in Russia -- like fifty thousand others during WWII.
Sophia Loren had to be one of the first international stars, not counting the Europeans who fled to America before and during World War II. She was a Hollywood sensation, and also with director Vittorio De Sica, co-star Marcello Mastroianni and producer-husband Carlo Ponti (who was old enough to be her father, not to mention married to another woman).
This was apparently the first (or one of the first) films of the western world to be shot in Russia, at least since it became the USSR. That makes it rather interesting, and I wonder what the Italian-Russian relationship was in the 1960s and 1970s. I view the so-called Cold War through American eyes, and I am not sure how Europe felt about it.
Sophia Loren had to be one of the first international stars, not counting the Europeans who fled to America before and during World War II. She was a Hollywood sensation, and also with director Vittorio De Sica, co-star Marcello Mastroianni and producer-husband Carlo Ponti (who was old enough to be her father, not to mention married to another woman).
This was apparently the first (or one of the first) films of the western world to be shot in Russia, at least since it became the USSR. That makes it rather interesting, and I wonder what the Italian-Russian relationship was in the 1960s and 1970s. I view the so-called Cold War through American eyes, and I am not sure how Europe felt about it.