Marriage Italian Style

MARRIAGE ITALIAN STYLE presents director Vittorio De Sica's fourth collaboration with actress Sophia Loren, and the film exploits the busty Amazon for all she's worth. In the role of Filomena Marturano, a lusty prostitute, Loren's costumes range from tiny to scanty. Loren's fine comic timing, combined with a fine script and the bubbling charm of co-star Marcello Mastroianni elevates the picture from mere titillation to consistently deft and amusing farce. As Domenico Soriano, Mastroianni is on the verge of marrying a younger woman when he hears that his long time mistress, Filomena, is on her deathbed. He rushes to her side, where in a series of flashbacks, the film details the couple's twenty year relationship. Domenico offers to marry Filomena, but when she recovers miraculously he recognizes that her illness was only a ruse--forcing Filomena to pull deeper from her bag of tricks to catch her man.