I Girasoli
“A woman born for love. A man born to love her. A timeless moment in a world gone mad.”
Sunflower movie storyline. In Naples, in World War II, Giovanna has a torrid love affair with the soldier Antonio, who is ready to embark to Africa. Giovanna proposes that they get married in order to obtain a twelve day pass. Then Antonio pretends that he is insane and he is sent to an asylum. However, the doctors discover the farce and they give Antonio an ultimatum: 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 try and find him out in the countryside. When she finds a lead in a village, her hope becomes disappointment with truth about his disappearance.
Sunflower (Italian: I Girasoli) is a 1970 Italian drama film directed by Vittorio De Sica. It was the first western movie to be filmed in the USSR. Some scenes were filmed near Moscow, while others near Poltava, a regional center in Ukraine.
Giovanna (Sophia Loren) and Antonio (Marcello Mastroianni) marry to delay Antonio’s deployment during World War II. After that buys them twelve days of happiness, they try another scheme, in which Antonio pretends to be a crazy man. Finally, Antonio is sent to the Russian Front. When the war is over, Antonio does not return and is listed as missing in action. Despite the odds, Giovanna is convinced her true love has survived the war and is still in the Soviet Union. Determined, she journeys to the Soviet Union to find him.
In the Soviet Union, Giovanna visits the sunflower fields, where there is supposedly one flower for each fallen Italian soldier, and where the Germans forced the Italians to dig their own mass graves. Eventually, Giovanna finds Antonio, but by now he has started a second family with a woman who saved his life, and they have one daughter. Childless, having been faithful to her husband, Giovanna returns to Italy, heartbroken, but unwilling to disrupt her love’s new life.
Some years later, Antonio returns to Giovanna, asking her to come back with him to the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, Giovanna has tried to move on with her own life, moving out of their first home together and into her own apartment. She works in a factory and is living with a man, with whom she has a baby boy. Antonio visits her and tries to explain his new life, how war changes a man, how safe he felt with his new woman after years of death. Unwilling to ruin Antonio’s daughter’s or her own new son’s life, Giovanna refuses to leave Italy, expressing an intense emotional maturity in her choice.
Sunflower – I Girasoli (1970)
Directed by: Vittorio De Sica
Starring: Marcello Mastroianni, Sophia Loren, Lyudmila Savelyeva, Galina Andreeva, Anna Carena, Nadya Serednichenko, Germano Longo, Glauco Onorato, Silvano Tranquilli, Marisa Traversi
Screenplay by: Tonino Guerra, Giorgi Mdivani, Cesare Zavattini
Production Design by: Piero Poletto
Cinematography by: Giuseppe Rotunno
Film Editing by: Adriana Novelli
Costume Design by: Enrico Sabbatini
Set Decoration by: Giantito Burchiellaro
Music by: Henry Mancini
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Avco Embassy (Spain & United States)
Release Date: March 14, 1970
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