User reviews

In Naples, in World War II, the local Giovanna (Sophia Loren) has a torrid love affair with the soldier Antonio (Marcello Mastroianni), who is ready to embark to Africa. Giovanna proposes him to get married with her to get a leave of twelve days; then Antonio pretends that he is insane and he is sent to an asylum. However, the doctors discover the farce and they give the option to Antonio to go to the Russian front as volunteer instead of being sued. When Antonio is missing in action in Russia, Giovanna does not accept that he is dead. Years after the end of the war, Giovanna travels to Russia with a picture of Antonio to seek him out in the countryside. When she finds a lead in a village, her hope becomes disappointment with truth about his disappearance.

"I Girasoli" is one of the most famous romances of cinema and discloses a beautiful story of love, hope, truth and renounce. Vittorio De Sica explores the chemistry between Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni to the best, supported by a magnificent cinematography and the wonderful soundtrack of Henry Mancini, which certainly is among the most beautiful ones of the cinema history. The screenplay uses much ellipsis, and my remarks are the lack of dates, leaving the viewer without any reference of how many years have passed; further, the dialogs in Russian that are not translated. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Os Girassóis da Rússia" ("The Russia's Sunflowers")

I suppose this film is just a maudlin melodrama, so is the music by Mancini. But then..., what a marvelous maudlin melodrama!... Why shouldn't it be? what's wrong with maudlin melodramas? If they are well done and authentic with their characters, if we get wrapped up with their emotions..., well, can you ask for anything more?

I just saw this movie on "You Tube" for the second time. I remember seen it on late TV in Italy, many years ago, and the impression was so powerful that after somebody mentioned it a few days ago --I didn't remember any more this title until they mentioned it-- I decided to look for it and watch it again, to see after so many years if the impression was still the same (so many films are a total disappointment when seen for a second time years later), but it wasn't the case with this one.

The story is so poignant that it can hold on its own very well no matter the change in mores and film technical improvements, it definitely grabs your interest till the very end (I must admit the film is far from perfect, since, for example, there are no indications of how many years went by or the new life style Sophia's character turns to after her Russian trip.

It also has two climaxes, both marvelous, but I think they should have decided for one or the other, two climaxes is too much within the same movie, and the length should have been shortened quite a bit.

Anyhow, forget about the lachrymose side of the story and submerge yourself in it (also get some Kleenex handy because everybody will need them, and plenty) and if you have to have a good cry, well, have it and enjoy it!! (After all is just a movie).

Epic romantic melodrama , set at the end of World War II , dealing with an Italian woman , Giovanna, she is a bereft war bride living near Milan , she conducts a desperate search for her husband, a soldier considered missing in action in Russia during WWII. As her husband never returned after serving on the Russian front . As Giovanna wandering over what feels like the whole of Russia and looking for clues her hubby. A woman born for love. A man born to love her. A timeless moment in a world gone mad. In a world gone mad...a love story. Filmed in Russia from the Kremlin to the Ukraine. A love story that spans two tempestuous decades in a motion picture of extraordinary power and enchantment!

Excruciating drama in which Sophia Loren plays a headstrong Italian wife looking for hubby , going to Russia to find him, starting in the town near the winter battle when he disappeared and much picturesque and soul-searching later she finds him with unexpected consequences . It is a heart-rending and heart-breaking studio of a beloved couple sadly separated by an unfortunate fate . There's a flashback to their brief courtship near her hometown of Naples, his 12-day leave to marry her, and ruses to keep from deploymentby posing as a nutty man . Sofia Loren gives a nice acting as the obstinate woman who refuses to accept that her husband missing on the Russian front, is dead. While Marcello mastroianni is perfect as the amnesic man missing in battle . The Technicolor cinematography by Giuseppe Rotunno and David Vinitsi is truly gorgeous. Shot on location in Russia and infact , this film is deemed to be the first occidental film to be shot in Poltava, Ukraine .And positively soaked in one of Henri Mancini's lushest soudtracks.

The motion picture produced by Carlo Ponti and Joseph H Levine , was stunningly directed by Vittorio de Sica . De Sica told about Loren : ¨I consider Sophia a great , a good actress and a great personality. Because she is a Neopolitan. Like me. We are the same people, the same origin. And we feel together the same. Yes, for me, I am very happy when I work with Sophia¨. De Sica was a famous actor and director .He turned to filmmaking in 1940 , making light comedies. His fifth movie collaborated with writer Cesare Zavattini , I Bambi ni ci guardano ,in which showed great sensitivity and nice fIl making . It was also the first movie he made with writer Zavattini with whom he would subsequently shoot "Shoeshine" , and Bicycle thief .After the boxoffice disaster "Umberto D" , he abandoned the Neorrealist genre to make more commercial films than previous . Subsequently , he he made "Yesterday , Today and Tomorrow" with Marcelo Mastroiani and Sofia Loren in which he won another Oscar . His two final films were Garden of Finzi Contini and A brief vacation that had limited success .Rating 7/10 . Worthwhile watching . Above average . Essential and indispensable seeing for Italian films buffs .

meeting between two great actors and an impressive director. images from Italy and picture of Russia in the air of Cold War.a basic story about a couple, a war and a choice. a travel and the form of truth. beautiful music and force of unspoken words. that is all. or only gentle performance of Ludmila Savelieva. a great film. not for cast or dramatic slices, for the force of emotions or for the sunflower as vegetable testimonies about a tragedy. but only for its virtue to be a seed. a seed of questions and answers. an exercise of empathy. a sad love story in which love is more than feeling. a poem but just a very special poem. mixture of pure joy, shadows of war, a miracle and a search, it is homage to a sacrifice generation and reflection of deep need of sense in a chaotic world. nothing pink, nothing cold. only picture of a man, a young Russian woman who speaks Italian, a charming Sophia Loren and same Mastroianni. but the essence is possession of public.

"I Girasoli" is certainly one of the best romantic stories in an honest and pure setting in Italy and Russia. It is a dramatic love story of Antonio and Giovana wanting to stay together in the war. The impossibility to hold on to the newly found and sweetest happiness becomes inevitable in the destructive war, where Anoinio is found half frozen by a Russian woman. The accent lies in finding love in warm sunny Italy and loosing this in the freezing cold war thousands of miles away. Although in this new other world there is love too, it is never the same as before. At the end the search for the lost love is completed and in vain when life has changed there lives irreversibly. Un impossibile ritorno al passato.

As another reviewer pointed out this bit of cold war propaganda (pro Soviet) was absurdly impossible. An axis soldier would have been shot period or arrested as a spy and killed slowly in a prison camp.

So you have to dismiss the story as absurd as it stands and place it in Iran or Finland or some place where it could have happened. Or just suspend your disbelief.

Once you do that you can enjoy this bit of really well done maudlin romance. Loren had to be at the height of her classy beauty in this film (before she was aged for the story).

I loved the part where she spots an Italian man---the only handsome well dressed stylish man in any of the Russian scenes. Of course Loren herself is like a super nova star compared to the kerchiefed thick legged Russian women. Italian audiences must have loved this film.

I give it a 7 as it is very enjoyable once you deal with the absurd story and the maudlin nature of the movie. As another reviewer states what is so wrong with first class maudlin??

The sunflower carries a great weight of symbolism in this film. It doesn't appear until you have got half way through and follow Sofia Loren on her odyssey for a lost Italian husband in Russia, but when then the field of sunflowers open up, the greatness of the film and the story also open up. Vittorio de Sica and Cesare Zavattini worked together on many films, and they are all masterpieces, but it is difficult to conceive that any of them could have been greater than this. It's not just the story, as profound and touching as Doctor Zhivago, but also, in so many of de Sica's film, the very significant psychology. By all rational conclusions her husband should have been dead in Russia, lost in the winter, where even an Italian fellow soldier almost saw him dying and had to leave him there freezing to death in the snows actually prompted to do so by the dying man himself, and that fellow soldier tells the story to Sofia Loren, convinced that he was dead, since there was no other possibility, but still she feels he is still alive and goes all the way to Russia to search for him. She goes by instinct alone, overriding all common sense and rational probablility. To this comes the extremely appropriate music by Henry Mancini, one of his finest examples of film music, changing style and melodies on the way according to the circumstances, and the probably most impressive instant is the funeral march in the snows. There is another funeral march as well, the very common one by Chopin, but in dead slow tempo, which adds to the very strong sensitivity and mood of the entire film, in which you feel the pathos of both Tolstoy and Doctor Zhivago, and James Hilton in his "Knight Without Armour", another gripping war and Russian winter novel. In brief, once more Vittorio de Sica has surpassed himself in greater eloquence than ever with Cesare Zavattini - and the eternal couple Sofia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni, who made many great films together, the best ones with Vittorio de Sica, although most of their films were comedies. This is no comedy and no tragedy either but rather a very profound presentation of humanity and destiny.

Vittorio de Sica achieved a remarkable feat in this eye-catching 1970 production, bringing together Americans and Soviets, in the midst of the Cold War, in the co-production of a Franco-Italian film.

From the Americans he got a memorable soundtrack, written and directed by Henry Mancini and nominated for an Oscar. From the Soviets he received the footage from Mosfilm, directed by Andrey Konchalovskiy, as well as the actress Ludmila Saveleva.

The script by Tonino Guerra and Cesare Zavattini has everything it needs to work, but the film gets lost somewhere in between so many attributes.

The story is basic and excessively melodramatic. The soundtrack is beautiful but quickly becomes cloying. The footage of the sunflower fields and the cemeteries of Russian combatants is powerful and eloquent, but inconsequential. This is, after all, a story of the living, not the dead. Only the final notes of the fatalism of war, which determines people's fates, far beyond their individual will, remain to give the film any meaning.

But it is not enough. A final result clearly less than the sum of its parts.

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.

I just finished watching the stunning Blu Ray of the original Italian English-subtitled version of this film--the best version available. I do not understand all the naysayers reviewing this film. If you are a fan of Loren and Mastroianni, if you are a fan of DeSica, if you enjoy a good old-fashioned melodrama that will tear at your heart, you MUST see this film! To dismiss this film as Soviet propaganda, or as unrealistic, is like criticizing "The Little Mermaid" for having a singing mermaid and talking fish. It utterly misses the point. This movie contains one of the very best, if not THE best Sophia Loren performance on film. Henri Mancini's score is unforgettable. This film makes you care about the plight of both characters. It is available as part of the new "Sophia Loren Collection" box set, and for me, this, along with "Marriage Italian Style," is the "jewel" of the set. See it!

An Italian woman is convinced her husband survived World War 2

Starring Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni.

Written by Tonino Guerra, Cesare Zavattini and Giorgi Mdivani.

Directed by Vittorio De Sica.

This is my first foreign subtitled film of the year and it's pretty average.

There are no stand out performances and the story just about kept my interest but didn't have me on the edge of my seat. Sophia Loren is one of those actresses that was spoken about a lot in the seventies and eighties but as far as know this is the first time I have seen her in anything.

We don't really get the chance to know any of the two main characters and the whole thing is very slow and never really gets going. On a more positive note the soundtrack by Henry Mancini ( another famous name from the seventies and eighties) is superb and the cinematography, considering this was made in 1970 was really good. I loved the location filming.

Overall a bit too slow for me.

7/10 mainly for the soundtrack.

Sunflower (1970) 103 mins

Two newly-weds were split up when the husband was forced to fight on the Russian Front. Hearing nothing from him, his wife sets out on a desperate journey across Russia to find out if he has survived.

Includes an excellent score by Henry Mancini, for which he received an Oscar nomination. Mancini at his best!!

Shot on location in Italy and Russia which provides a dramatic background.

Sophia was never more beautiful, Marcello was never more debonair. The on-screen chemistry is classic cinema! Modern films pale in comparison to their simple and genuine portrayals captured under the direction of Vittorio De Sica.

A superb mixture of ingredients by De Sica, right down to the inclusion of Mancini as composer!

I wish I could persuade the copyright holder to re-release this title to video.

At one time I owned a copy of this on VHS, but it was destroyed. Any help locating it again (in any format) is appreciated! Looking for the soundtrack too!

Having focused on post-war Italy in "The Bicycle Thief", Vittorio DeSica focused on the war - and many years later - in "I girasoli" ("Sunflower" in English"). I had never known about the Italian contingent that fought the Soviet Union, so that part was certainly new to me, and I thought that Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni did well in their roles. I don't know whether or not I would recommend the movie for any kind of class. As it was, the DVD kept skipping over scenes, so I may have missed important parts of the film. Overall, I don't know specifically whether I would call this a really good movie or just an OK one. I didn't find it sappy, if that's the problem that some people have with the film.

Whatever the case, I consider the movie worth seeing, if only once.

Although not the most interesting story (in the script and direction), told by maestro Vittorio De Sica, "I girasoli" has singular moments of visual poetry, interpretation, sound and indisputably of De Sica's ability to record and transmute the simplicities of life.

I remember the first films that I watched this, that is, a great inspiration and to those who always devote an absolute favoritism. Vittorio De Sica through the possibilities of presenting and not representing life, as the Italian neo-realist movement wished, giving rise to films that were very close to a documentary record and fascinated by their seam in reverse, without modesty to show the volatile frenzy of a Country and its people, in the face of the new relations that emerge, and in the uncertainty of their durability.

Certainly a cultural movement can not be tied to a creator, on the contrary, it must be a device for new constructions, and this is notorious in "I girasoli". Produced in 1970, with a script by Cesare Zavattini and an argument elaborated by Tonino Guerra, famous poet, writer and chronicler of the war. Being an Italo-Franco-Soviet co-production, this allowed for a rare record of the former Communist bloc, in part because of De Sica's good relations with the Italian Communist Party.

In the form of an ultra simplistic summary, I would like to say, "I girasoli" is the portrait of a brief happiness in the face of the non-amorous concreteness ruled by the adversities of war and reasons not always surrounded by logical meaning or possible to name. The film succeeds as a moving family drama, and microcosm of the social history of Italy during the 1940s (war period) until the early 1970s.

The weight of the commercial influence causes losses notorious for the film, in which its plot is constructed through moorings that seek to structure and punctuate the trajectory of the personages to the molds of the melodramatic structure of the films Hollywood of that time, disfiguring the original character of drama that the film proposes And the crisis relations of the drama, always prosperous element in the hands of the director De Sica. This disfigurement may be noted, for example, in the long and unnecessary record of Masha (Lyudmila Savelyeva) revealing to Giovanna (Sophia Loren) how she found and how she rescued Antonio (Marcello Mastroianni) from the cold and the war. A resource, I think, to further punctuate the melodrama of the story and to even more balance the audience in their love and final end crowd with whom Antonio should stay? The beloved woman or the woman who saved you?

There are several moments in the film that result in the same sense, to prolong the melodrama, to balance the decisions of the public and to exhibit explanations, something that makes the film exhausting, explanatory in excess and shallow before the dimension of human questions and the possibilities of social, Political and war-related issues that end up being used only as a background, and which, when evoked, are treated superficially.

A highlight and deserves special attention is the relationship established by the protagonists Giovanna (Sophia Loren) and Antonio (Marcello Mastroianni). De Sica had done some work, with Sophia and Antonio as a couple of protagonists, (example: Ieri, oggi, domani -1963). This previous experience, collaborates both for those who have already attended or for those who witness for the first time the partnership between such actors and the director. This total chemistry, ease and intimacy for the game, collaborate exactly, where it does not take more than three minutes, for the public to twist and "ship" the couple Giovanna and Antonio. Something very important and necessary for this story, since the happiness between these two is brief. Just as in a football match, the audience vibrates with the determined, passionate posture of Giovanna - an Italian woman - who goes to Russia to look for Antonio, the husband given as lost during World War II. The crossing is made by urban landscapes and fields of sunflowers, a beautiful, flowery and poetic passage that collaborate in the perspective of a happy ending.

The work of Sophia Loren is hard in the attempt to disengage from the muse and sexual appeal common to the history of her characters, and in many moments succeed, but to facilitate the outcome of its history, we have precisely the use of the muse and the sexual appeal, But clearly as a resource imposed by the script and accepted by the management. Already Marcello Mastroianni impresses by charisma and magnetism, a simple portrait of the actor or character are enough. We honestly know that it is not at all a difficult job for both actors, since the characters do not require during the feat, during what is filmed or captured, a scattering of states, feelings and conflicts. The melodramatic load is already in charge of this, but at no time do we see a minor work, a corner job, or a lack of prestige.

Highlights for the track of Henry Mancini, famous for creating musical identity in the films in which he works. Giuseppe Rotunno's Photography, especially in all the scenes of crowd, that added to the direction of Vitoria print a true picture of an Italy. Among so many moments of brilliance of direction and photography, I highlight the first scene of war in Russia. The strong and fruitful image of a large red flag swaying in the air and oscillating between projections, background and transparencies of a war in the snow that is stained by the blood of people as lost as the fate of two homelands that oscillate between the mother And the hangman, an opposition who, at the same time, embraces and sentences the life of the citizen (common man), and the soldier of war.

'I girasoli' ('Sunflower' in the English release), Vittorio De Sica's 1970 film, is a film that is impossible to judge outside of its historical context. Actually I should say its historical contexts. The film is a war melodrama, the story of an interrupted love and of the search beyond all hope for an Italian soldier who disappeared in the Soviet Union during the Second World War. The fate of Italian prisoners of war at that time was a lesser known and rather less convenient episode for all parties involved, so tackling it in 1970 can be considered an act of courage. However, the way the story is told is very problematic and certain details are completely implausible. It is very likely that many compromises were made by the screenwriters and by the producer Carlo Ponti who, after making 'Doctor Zhivago' in 1965, wanted very much to make a film in co-production with the USSR studios. He achieved his goal, but the result is debatable. The love story related in the film is powerful and emotional, but the falseness of the reflection of the historical context shadows it. 'I girasoli' remains in the categories of cinematic curiosities and of the films made in the last decade of De Sica's life and career that - for the most part - failed to repeat the success and freshness of the post-war neo-realist masterpieces.

The first part of 'I girasoli' is the one that I liked most. At least a decade after the end of World War II, Giovanna has not come to terms with the disappearance of her husband, Antonio, who has gone off to fight on the Eastern Front. The two had had a short and passionate love story, one of those that happen especially in times of war, and they had married rather spontaneously to earn the extra 12 days of leave given to freshly married soldiers before departing to the battlefields. Antonio's tracks were lost in the terrible battle of Stalingrad, and since his body was never discovered, the woman fiercely believes that he is still alive. From here begins the part that seems more than implausible, not to say false, of the story. Giovanna will go on a journey to great Russia to find Antonio. I will not tell too much in order to avoid spoilers. I will only say that nothing is being said about prison camps or the Gulag, nor about the atrocities of the war or about the punishments that in Soviet Russia were applied to those who 'made pacts 'sympathized' with the enemies. A second love story is being added to the first, much less interesting or believable (despite the presence on the screen of the beautiful Soviet actress Lyudmila Saveleva, whose talent I admired in other films).

Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni starred in 17 films together. 'I girasoli' is one of them, and seeing the two in the roles of lovers on screen is one of the great pleasures that this film offers to its viewers. The rather complicated connection between the two works perfectly and their magnetism (combined with humor) as actors and as lovers is formidable. The film also has special visual qualities, with some memorable scenes such as the one with the sunflower field that gives the film its title (although the metaphor is a bit forced), but also or especially the scenes shot in the train stations. Arguably, all the key scenes - breakups and reunions - in this film take place in train stations. Also included are documentary sequences using Soviet propaganda films against the backdrop of a red flag - a likely homage to Sergei Eisenstein. Unfortunately, the feeling of falsity - both in the historical account and in the scenes that take place in the USSR after the war - dominates the second part of 'I girasoli'. Vittorio De Sica seems to have forgotten the very lesson he had passed on to generations of filmmakers influenced by Italian neorealism. For a film dealing with political or historical themes to succeed, artistic truth must be anchored in historical and social truth.

You know the plot.

Sunflower was Vittorio De Sica's last film. It was dismissed by the critics as hopelessly maudlin melodrama. But anyone who cares enough to be reading this no doubt knows the humanity he crafted into every frame, and the beauty and sadness of life it evokes.

Henry Mancini's theme song is, IMVHO, the very best he ever wrote. I'm reduced to tears every time I hear it. Yet it seems Mancini himself treated as a lesser child. His daughter recorded it to lyrics better left forgotten.