La Fortuna di essere donna (Lucky to be a Woman). 1956. Italy. Directed by Alessandro Blasetti. Screenplay by Blasetti, Suso Cecchi d’Amico, Sandro Continenza, Ennio Flaiano. With Marcello Mastroianni, Sophia Loren, Charles Boyer. In Italian; English subtitles. 4K digital restoration by Cinecittà. 100 min.
The underappreciated Alessandro Blasetti was the first to pair Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni, first in Our Times (1953), then in Too Bad She’s Bad (1954), and finally in the little-seen Lucky to Be a Woman, in which Mastroianni, playing a paparazzi avant la lettre (La dolce vita would appear only four years later), takes a photograph of unwitting salesgirl Loren as she adjusts her stockings. When his picture lands on the cover of popular magazines, it leads to romantic and legal entanglements. Blasetti, together with the brilliant trio of writers Alberto Moravia, Suso Cecchi d’Amico, and Ennio Flaiano, captured not only the impossible bind of young women in 1950s Italy—mother or whore?—but also the genuine chemistry between these bright young stars.