Two Women

• Film Title: Two Women
• Original Year of Production: 1960
• Studio: Compagnia Cinematografica Champion
• Director: Vittorio De Sica
• Original Novel: La Ciociara
• Cast: Sophia Loren, Jean-Paul Belmondo, and Eleonora Brown
• Producers: Carlo Ponti and Joseph E. Levine 

The black and white film Two Women tells a point of view that is different from that of typical films on war. This mainstream drama tells of the horrors of war away from the soldiers and focuses on the citizens of Italy. Even further, the story is told through the narrative of two females, a mother and a daughter. The mother Cesira flees Rome for her native countryside while trying to protect her innocent daughter Rosetta from the horrors of war. In essence, the thesis of the film is represented by Cesira and Rosetta’s lasting relationship. Throughout the film, Cesira protects her daughter from hunger, tries to shield from her murder, and comforts her after they both were raped by a rogue group of Moroccan soldiers. Although the young Rosetta was brutally raped towards the end of the film and it becomes obvious that a piece of her innocence as a naive and sheltered child has become lost, their mother-daughter relationship was never broken. Yes the horrors of war can easily be attributed as the argument of any war film, but the strong relationship of Cesira and Rosetta is the main focus of the film.

The Italin film takes place in Italy during WWII. Towards the end of the war, the German’s and Italian Fascists are retreating from the Allies. The hardships faced by the citizens of this worn-torn country are represented thoroughly throughout the film. One example was the Allied bombings of Rome at the beginning of the film that ushered Cesira to flee to the country with Rosetta. In addition, the lack of food and proper nutrition was seen throughout the film. In one scene, Cesira and Michele go to look for food in the next town and find a hysterical woman who had just lost her baby. The women offers her breast milk to the couple when they ask where they could find buy some food. According to Smith, “the Nazi government depended on the flow of goods from pillage and thus organized shipments of grain, metals and other resources from occupied countries to Germany itself.”(332)  Indeed the movie presented a country that was lacking even the basic goods of cultivation. The reasons for such troubles are the German allocation of goods in addition to a lack of young able-bodied males because of their legal mandatory obligation to serving in the army.

The film alluded to the struggles felt by seemingly every member of Italian society during this time. Members of the Italian fascist regime seem to abuse their power in petty tactics such as threats of violence and a sense superiority above their fellow citizens. The divisions amongst different political ideologies were clear among the Fascists, the Communists and the Americans. Even in a country that was torn apart by war, there was a still bitter conflict between citizens over politics. An example would be the members of the Fascist army that are fleeing the Allies when they encounter the young Communist sympathizer Michelle. One Fascist pulls out a gun and points it at Michelle over a petty disagreement. According to Smith, “the war killed far more civilians than soldiers”, “the defeated citizens of Europe often paid the financial costs of their country’s occupation, died performing slave labor, and suffered in numerous other ways.”(332)  The involvement of almost every major industrial country from America to the U.S.S.R. led to bitter fighting on multiple fronts, from the streets of Rome, to the countryside of Ciociaria.

The turning point of the film was when young Rosetta and her mother were raped by a known rogue group of Moroccan soldiers. Throughout the whole film, Cecira acted as shield for Rosetta against the horrors of war. She tried to protect her daughter’s child-like innocence by being a strong and courageous woman in a more than dangerous and hostile environment. For example, Cecira comforted her daughter when Michelle was taken captive by German soldiers on the run and seeking safe passage through the hills. However, Cecira could not protect her daughter from all the travesties of war. Towards the end of the film both Cecira and Rosetta were raped and Rosetta lost her innocence. However, after Cecira is visibly shaken up from the whole ordeal and acts distant from her mother. The picture at the top of the page is a film poster depicting a scene where the war seems to have gotten the better of these women. However, at the end of the film, the hug each other and the camera pans out making them appear smaller and revealing a big object in the left side of the screen that closely resembles some piece of WWII weaponry. According to class lecture, this could be seen as a way of illustrating the strong relationship of Cecira and Rosetta in the uncompromising and unrelenting chaos of war. In an article by Jan Kozma-Southal, a discussion of the imagery used by the author Alberto Moravia helps shed some insight on the multiple metaphors of the book that the film was based. In his book, he uses the metaphor of a goat as means of self-sacrifice against the atrocities of the war in terms of Rosetta’s character. “Rosetta's upbringing has rendered her just as incapable of defending herself as the goat of which she speaks.”(211) In such cruel and hard times, even the most innocent and naive people cannot go unharmed.  

The film was released in 1960 about fifteen years after the end of WWII. The summer Olympics were held in Rome during this year. It’s ironic that fifteen years later all the super-powers of the world had an invested interest in winning in Italy. During this time, the ideologies and sense of nationalism that were responsible for WWII were still accountable in torn countries such as Vietnam. Communist and anti-communist governments were engrained in the beginnings of a bitter cold-war that sought to reach as many countries as possible. The U.S.S.R. and their communist ideas and the United States had once been allies but then become enemies after the war. The tension between these two super-powers had led to possibility of a WWIII.