A Special Day (1977) A beautiful study of two souls lost in plain sight (Review)

To see a film open with 10 minutes of historical footage of Hitler and his pre-World War II rallies, without a hint of irony or lazy short-hand, is a little disconcerting. It’s unconventional to see such a villain of modern history portrayed without any filter, perhaps, but there is a meaning in the madness of Ettore Scola’s A Special Day. The film is half of cult films debuting duo of releases, both of which feature Sophia Loren, Scola’s contribution to that release day involves itself with the moment in history when the regimes of Mussolini and Hitler met. Credit where credit is due with Scola and his writing team for presenting a status quo without subverting its agenda.

Loren is Antonietta, Mother to six children and Wife to Emanuele (John Vernon), her life consists of looking after the homestead and her brood – merely existing from one day to the next. As her family join the masses in heading to the public meeting and overall auspicious day in the fascist calendar, she is left alone to her own devices. With the solitude and the murmur of the radio documenting this special day, Scola uses the elegance of an expansive depth of field and long takes to present Antonietta in her constricted element. As she is working, the family’s pet bird makes its bid for escape flying off to another wing of the tower block. Leaving the confines of her own four walls, Loren heads off attempting to reclaim the bird – this takes her to the flat of Gabriele (Marcello Mastroianni), a charismatic former-radio narrator living on his own. What ensues is a passionate two-handed drama as the pair find a mutual affinity. Is the special day for those subservient fascists or Antonietta and Gabriele?

In the United Kingdom the idea of a film containing anti-fascist rhetoric would be lost, a case of stating the obvious. In Italy, however, that is an entirely different discussion with the country consistently having that ideology represented in the political classes. A Special Day has two issues at the core of the drama and both are scathing. Gabriele (Mastroianni) is gay and as his arc develops, he reveals that he was ousted from society as he didn’t fit with fascist governments prescribed image of what “a man should be”. As both he and a book that Antonietta has in their house explain, a man should be a father, a worker and a soldier. As Gabriele is none of those he is treated with disdain, that he is somehow subversive. Mastroianni brings this suffocating isolation to life beautifully, he is simultaneously passionate, dejected and over the moon that he gets to interact with someone besides the foul accusations made by their caretaker.

Antonietta is the very opposite of that, she has a loving family and husband. However, her family treat her as a given, that she will always be there to do everything for them, whether its basic day to day maintenance or as a machine to give birth to children. She has no place in this fascist society, Antonietta has been locked in a conceptual prison that she dare not leave. Together they share isolation where friendship and two towering performances blossom. With the life of Mastroianni being contrasted by the void that lies behind Loren’s eyes, she may have won the best actress Oscar for the other film released with A Special Day, Two Women, but this is a role that deserves far more attention.

Naturalistic performances and characterization that ebbs and flows with the passing of each line of dialogue, A Special Day hits hard in spite of lacking the cultural, political and historical contexts to tie it to. The visual identity of Scola’s film fills in that gap through the simple use of colour. The tower block is like any, so there is a degree of uniformity to that, however, the colour palette is imbued with a drained brown. Be you a housewife, employee of the military or ‘dissident’, the colour of the world around you is the same – no difference is allowed, conformity reigns and anything different needs addressing whether through social castration or through more severe terms. It’s through additions like colour or the broader pallet of surrealism that films tied to the social matters of a country stand out. Shocking it is then both its director (Ettore Scola) and a film as beautifully acted, shot and reasoned as A Special Day has become so obscure.

Thanks for reading our review of A Special Day

For more Movie talk, check out our podcast CINEMA ECLECTICA