Thehibikiew Not even bad in a good way

Motompa Go in cold, and you're likely to emerge with your blood boiling. This has to be seen to be believed.

Sameer Callahan It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Sienna-Rose Mclaughlin The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Frank Dux One of the biggest hits of the "Italian Comedy", starred by the top of the Italian star-system. De Sica give us a solid film all along the length, taking us from drama to comedy, they're separated by a faint border; as the life itself.Obviously, the time has passed and some points are old-fashioned (technical resources, technology, life's perspective) but it's true the film gets one realistic approach (it couldn't be less being this film one of the examples of Italian neo-realism) about the drama of a woman who looks for dignity and fights for the good of her children.This pink neo-realism sows us the common life of Italian people after WWII. Mediterranian country, misogyny, catholic, conservator, noisy… similar to Spain (españolada, Landismo), Greece, etc.Good performances form Mastroianni, who is a playboy but with a good heart at least, and, especially Sophia Loren, at her prime, as Filomena, a prostitute who will fight for her honesty, dignity and her sons, a woman with attitude, tough in her acts and with some real curves. In other words the best "donna", along with Magnani, in all history.De Sica, without reaching the lever of previous works in the 40's, makes a gret work in a field he controls like only a few people more. Good photography and ambiance. Music as Italian music, little cloying but it don't bother and it suits the film.Thou, there are some negative points: - Relationship with children and their reaction are unnatural and the aren't worked as it'd be necessary. - Story could be analyzed in a deeper way. It's a good topic. - Make-up of Loren at 17, she doesn't look even for a moment, her body is different, no one can't do it something about it with that clothes, but the make-up could be better.But it's a good movie, despise of these thing and the fact that is a movie made in the early 60's and other things I can't remember. You can enjoy this film and discover if you didn't make it earlier the refreshing Italian cinema.

theowinthrop Starting with "Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow" in 1963, Marcello Mastroianni and Sophia Loren began a series of films together that were the comic equivalents of the series of movies made by Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn in the 1940s to 1966. The comparison is an apt one, surprisingly, because the two sets of performers perfectly complemented each other in their films together and literally examined the relationship of man and woman in these films beyond most of their contemporaries. If the Italians were able to be more explicit about sexual relations than the Americans were, I remind the reader that in "Sea of Grass" the paternity of Tracy and Hepburn's son Robert Walker becomes a questionable matter to the former, and in "Adam's Rib" Hepburn's last comments about the similarities of man and women boil down to only one major difference (a small one - she does not say a penis but it is hinted). Tracy's response is to say "Vivre la difference! - Well hooray for that difference!""Matrimonio all'italiana" ("Marriage, Italian Style") is based on a play by writer and actor Eduardo de Filippo, and is not a sequel to Mastroianni's great international breakthrough comedy "Divorce, Italian Style". The latter had dealt with a Sicilian baron manipulating events and people to set up an unwanted wife into the position of being adulterous so that he could "legally" kill her and be free to marry a younger female cousin. "Marriage, Italian Style" deals with responsibility and growing old. It's a serious theme actually, and there are moments when the film turns serious with stunning effect (when Loren confronts Mastroianni on his suspicions and behavior towards her and her sons). The conclusion is not funny but given the antics of the entire film understandable and true.Loren is Filumena Maturiano, a young woman who became a prostitute towards the end of World War II. She meets Domenico Soriano (Mastroianni), a hard headed businessman in a brothel in 1945 and a long term sexual relationship develops (though there is a two year gap at the start). Domenico treats Filumena as a sex object, but she is a smart woman and soon rises to be his business assistant, helping him run a series of stores (several of them bakeries or coffee shops). After twenty two years he tells her he is planning to settle down and marry a younger employee. But Domenico is informed by another employee, Alfredo (Aldo Puglesi) that Filumena is dying. Domenico runs to her bedside, and agrees to her dying wish to marry. But as soon as the ceremony is over Filumena rises from the bed and tells Domenico that she isn't dying, but now they are finally married. Furious Domenico tells her he will get the marriage annulled as it was under false pretenses.She has her options - Alfredo has known her as long as Domenico, and offers to marry her if she wishes. She thanks her friend but she explains that she has another real secret to unload on Domenico. Eventually she explains to him that she had three sons, and one of them is Domenico's. The boys have been brought up separately, and she is now getting them together for the first time. Domenico is naturally quite interested in this situation, but when he asks which of the three boys is his Filumena acts quite coy, and later more belligerent.She finally explodes, pointing out to Domenico that if she ever tells him which of the boys is his, the two half-brothers who are not Domenico's will grow up to hate the third half-brother. This doesn't register at first, so Domenico tries to find out by himself, with some very comic results (in trying to compare his hand with one of the boys, all he ends up doing is overhearing the boy tell a co-worker that Donenico must be a homosexual). Gradually it does sink in that he has no right to put the three boys and Filumena through the ringer trying to pick out his actual son. In the end Domenico remarries Filumena, but one sees after the ceremony that while it is her victory it is not a complete one - Domenico is far from totally pleased that he has had to accept a situation that he never had any control over. Our last sight of them is of Domenico looking exhausted and old, and Filumena crying - possibly for joy at her victory, but just as likely out of realization that this is going to be a difficult marriage.Believe it or not "Marriage, Italian Style" is a comedy but one that is grown up in it's sensibilities. There are no quick remedies here - just like Domenico could not find a quick solution as to which of the three sons was his real son. One likes the final result of the film, as it is a realistic result of the battle of the sexes waged by the two protagonists, but the final results are funny only in the most extreme cynical way. It is hardly a merry ending. Still for a solid entertainment "Marriage, Italian Style" is hard to beat.

Claudio Carvalho In Naples, in the Second World War, the wolf businessman Domenico Soriano (Marcello Mastroianni) meets the seventeen years old whore Filumena Marturano (Sophia Loren) in a brothel during an allied bombing. Two years later, in the post-war, they meet each other by chance and begin a long affair. For twenty-two years, Filumena is his mistress and administrates his shops in Naples while Domenico is traveling. When Domenico decides to marry the young cashier of his bakery, Filumena lures him as if she were near to death and he marries her. Later he annuls their matrimony, and she tells him that she has three sons that she raised secretly, one of them is his legitimate son but she does not disclose his identity. The middle-age Domenico uses the most different subterfuges trying to find which teenager might be his son. "Matrimonio all'Italiana" is a delightful and dramatic romantic comedy. Sophia Loren is awesome in the role of a loving woman and protective mother. Marcello Mastroianni is magnificent performing a wolf that sees that the time has passed and he has a son, making his middle-age crisis become an obsessive attempt to disclose the identity of his biological son in the funniest moments of this film. The direction of Vittorio De Sica is fantastic, developing the dramatic situation and the romance with touches of comedy, but never falling in the easiest way of transforming the theme in a corny melodrama. The last scene is beautiful and touching. My vote is eight. Title (Brazil): "Matrimônio à Italiano" ("Matrimony a la Italian")

Gerald A. DeLuca MARRIAGE Italian STYLE is a glossy rendition of Eduardo De Filippo's Neapolitan play "Filumena Marturano", which he himself had made into a film in 1951. In this 1964 version Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni take the roles previously played by Eduardo and Titina De Filippo. The story deals with the long love affair between a wealthy, arrogant and selfish Neapolitan businessman (Marcello Mastroianni) and the seemingly ignorant ex-prostitute (Loren) who attempts to trick him into marriage by pretending to be dying and then bouncing back to life. She does all this because she wants to guarantee a better life for her three semi-secret children. One of her children is his, she tells him. Which one, she will never say. To say that Mastroianni and Loren had on-screen chemistry is an enormous understatement. They are both as marvelous together here as is other films together, most notably YESTERDAY, TODAY, AND TOMORROW and A SPECIAL DAY. For me one of the best moments in the film is Loren's walk down a sidewalk in Naples where the men and boys alike gape at her. That always knocks me out. Loren walks marvelously there and does a magnificent acting job elsewhere in this engaging dramatic farce. The film was directed by Vittorio De Sica, who had directed Loren's Academy Award performance in TWO WOMEN (LA CIOCIARA). It is among her most notable roles ever, along with TWO WOMEN, A SPECIAL DAY, THE BLACK ORCHID, and Lina Wertmüller's Saturday, Sunday, AND Monday.