Taglines: A special film about two special people.
A Special Day movie synopsis. May 6, 1938. It’s the late 1930’s Rome. It’s a national holiday in Italy today for the first state visit of Adolf Hitler to the country. The occasion is being marked by a lavish parade with both Hitler and Benito Mussolini to celebrate their political friendship/alliance in the name of fascism. Most of the Roman populace will attend the parade to celebrate with their leader.
Two that will not be are the following. Antonietta Taberi, who would have liked to have gone to the parade, has to stay at home to attend to her domestic chores in duty to her husband Emanuele and their six children, all who have gone to the parade without her. Gabriele is a former announcer on Italian Public Radio. Despite living in the same apartment complex (Gabriele only for the last two months) with their apartment windows facing each other across the courtyard, Antonietta and Gabriele meet for the first time today in Antonietta’s need to access his apartment to retrieve her escaped myna bird.
Their encounter is important to both of them if only for this one day. It takes Antonietta out of her humdrum life, where she is unappreciated and taken for granted by her family, her husband who she does not truly love. And Antonietta’s arrival halts what Gabriele was contemplating doing in light of the reason behind he not wanting to go to the parade and he no longer working as a radio announcer, that act which would replace the alternative of what will be happening to him later in the day.
A Special Day (Italian: Una Giornata Particolare) is a 1977 Italian drama film directed by Ettore Scola and starring Sophia Loren, Marcello Mastroianni and John Vernon. Set in Rome in 1938, its narrative follows a woman and her neighbor who stay home the day Adolf Hitler visits Benito Mussolini. It is an Italian-Canadian co-production.
Themes addressed in the film include gender roles, fascism, and the persecution of homosexuals under the Mussolini regime. It received several nominations and awards, including a César Award for Best Foreign Film, a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film, and two Academy Award nominations in 1978. It is featured on the list of the 100 Italian films to be saved.
Much of the film’s themes revolve around gender roles and the model of masculinity under fascist Italy. Antonietta is the donna madre, a mother figure who meets her feminine responsibilities in the regime by having six children, boasting one more will secure her the government bonus established for large families in 1933. The Fascist regime equates homosexuality with depopulation, and thus, Gabriele is suspected of treason.
The bachelor tax of 1926 was a measure against this, and Gabriele has to pay it. While the stay-at-home mother and homosexual neighbor would seem to be an improbable pairing, both are minimized by the regime, and find comfort and some sympathy in each other. At the end of the film, domestic life will continue as usual, but “inner resistance” to Fascism has been awakened.
A Special Day (1977)
Directed by: Ettore Scola
Starring: Sophia Loren, Marcello Mastroianni, John Vernon, Patrizia Basso, Françoise Berd, Tiziano De Persio, Maurizio Di Paolantonio, Antonio Garibaldi, Alessandra Mussolini, Nicole Magny
Screenplay by: Maurizio Costanzo, Ruggero Maccari, Ettore Scola
Production Design by: Enrico Sabbatini
Cinematography by: Pasqualino De Santis
Film Editing by: Raimondo Crociani
Costume Design by: Luciano Ricceri
Music by: Armando Trovajoli
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Surf Film
Release Date: May 17, 1977 (Cannes), August 12, 1977 (Italy)
Visits: 76