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Sunflower More at IMDbPro »I girasoli (original title)

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19 reviews in total

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12 out of 15 people found the following review useful:
Love, Hope, Truth and Renounce, 14 August 2009

Author: Claudio Carvalho from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

In Naples, in World War II, the local Giovanna (Sophia Loren) has a torrid love affair with the soldier Antonio (Marcello Mastroianni), who is ready to embark to Africa. Giovanna proposes him to get married with her to get a leave of twelve days; then Antonio pretends that he is insane and he is sent to an asylum. However, the doctors discover the farce and they give the option to Antonio 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 seek him out in the countryside. When she finds a lead in a village, her hope becomes disappointment with truth about his disappearance.

"I Girasoli" is one of the most famous romances of cinema and discloses a beautiful story of love, hope, truth and renounce. Vittorio De Sica explores the chemistry between Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni to the best, supported by a magnificent cinematography and the wonderful soundtrack of Henry Mancini, which certainly is among the most beautiful ones of the cinema history. The screenplay uses much ellipsis, and my remarks are the lack of dates, leaving the viewer without any reference of how many years have passed; further, the dialogs in Russian that are not translated. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Os Girassóis da Rússia" ("The Russia's Sunflowers")

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9 out of 11 people found the following review useful:
genuine De Sica, 4 June 2000

Author: Bocio from Buenos Aires, Argentina

Tremendous drama. Loren is magnificent as a woman who fights to re made his life after she descovered his missing husband/ italian soldier Mastroianni is living a new life in Kruschev's Russia. The final escene at the railway station is superb. Dont miss their face expressions. Mancini composition still sounds in my ears.

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10 out of 13 people found the following review useful:
touched my heart, 12 August 2001
Author: (soshoux@sprintmail.com)

You know the plot.

Sunflower was Vittorio De Sica's last film. It was dismissed by the critics as hopelessly maudlin melodrama. But anyone who cares enough to be reading this no doubt knows the humanity he crafted into every frame, and the beauty and sadness of life it evokes.

Henry Mancini's theme song is, IMVHO, the very best he ever wrote. I'm reduced to tears every time I hear it. Yet it seems Mancini himself treated as a lesser child. His daughter recorded it to lyrics better left forgotten.

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4 out of 4 people found the following review useful:
The DVD is a Disgrace to De Sica and his Cinematographer, 25 July 2005
Author: gregorybnyc from United States

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

So many reviews talk of the beauty of this film, but you can't see it on the horribly transferred DVD I saw from Netflix last weekend. So much of the color has been drained from the source, and you'd thought the movie was shot in experimental color in 1939 instead of 1970. Shame on the quick-buck types who have violated De Sica's original film. It's simply awful to watch.

I had never seen this emotional film about an Italian couple who marry on the eve of his being sent to the Russian front. He never returns, and she never gives up hope of his return. The Loren/Mastroianni pairing has always been potent on the screen. And it is so here with Loren utterly magnificent as the loving wife and the grief-struck and abandoned woman later on. When the wife travels to Russia to find him years after the war, she's much older, and her life has been ruined. So the scene where she finally is connected to him through his Russian wife, and then sees him arriving at the local train station, is truly heartbreaking. While he has committed himself to his new life in Russia, marrying another woman and father two children, Loren's face shows her disappointment and overwhelming sense of sadness as she finally see that all that this woman has is now denied to her. Mastroianni has a bothersome role here. It is Loren who initially proposes they marry at the beginning of the film. He's just another callow fellow having a fling before he goes off to war. Later when he's nearly dead from walking through the frozen Russian winter, in retreat and trying to get back to Italy, his character finally gives up and falls down in the snow to die. He is saved by a beautiful Russian girl who drags him back to civilization. I guess, grateful for her ministrations, he eventually marries her and settles into a new life in Russia. So the character is rather passive to begin with, robbing Mastroianni of his usual comic bombast.

In the end, you wonder why waste these two screen giants on this weeper of a movie. I have always adored Loren. Besides her jaw-dropping beauty, she always projected such warmth, generosity of spirit, a sense of fun, and when called for, she could be as great playing tragedy as any screen actress of any generation. TWO WOMEN proved that, and films such as A SPECIAL DAY and Marriage Italian STYLE only underlined the marvelous acting skills she possessed. So it's disappointing to see her giving her usual great self to a property that isn't quite worthy of her.

It's worth seeing for two stars who can elevate any material they've been given, but wait for a better DVD remastering. This one will not do at all.

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7 out of 10 people found the following review useful:
powerful drama, 16 August 1999
Author: (arzewski@shiprps.com) from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Another Matroianni-Loren combination, if you liked "A Special Day", you'll like this one too. Unusual in many ways, it is a co-production Italy-USSR, and it was shot on location in both countries. Notable also the comparison between scenes of 1945 and 1960. An Italian soldier does not return from WWII and his wife eventually goes to Russia to find him many years after the war ended, only to dramatically find him in a living situation in a russian family. He too will travel to Italy, but to find her in a living situation, and he too will return alone. The title of the movie ("The Sunflowers") point to the main crop the fields of Russia that italian soldiers tried to retreat from in months of walking and walking. It's amazing that this reel is not available on video, maybe because it is slightly politicized in social portrayal (in the trip to Italy, the ex-soldier finds prostitutes, a clear sign of degradation of society of the West in the view of soviet propaganda).

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3 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
A Truly Great Scene..., 22 January 2005
Author: richbh from Chicago

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

There are few scenes more moving or more powerful than the scene where Sophia meets her husband in Russia.

The scene is at a train station: he's on the arriving train and she's waiting on the platform. A huge number of people get off the train and she's looking at everyone through the chaos of moving bodies. She doesn't really expect to find him, but hope is still alive.

She sees him through the throng, he sees her.

The wordless communication between them as she gets on the train to leave and he stays on the platform watching her go is nothing less than thrilling. It's a great cinematic moment - a great moment of acting for Loren.

It is, perhaps, the single scene for which I shall always remember her.

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4 out of 6 people found the following review useful:
One of Vittorio De Scica's best films and having antiwar undercurrent., 11 January 2005

Author: (syui@agate.plala.or.jp) from Japan

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

The director Vittorio De Scica directed one of the best films depicting the tragedies and sorrows of those involved in wars against their will. Both Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni were superb in performing their respective roles as commoners living a peaceful life and who had their destiny changed all of a sudden into misery and agony. This film may be rated one of the best antiwar movies in the 20th century. I have seen this picture on my own DVD many times and each time I am deeply touched by the story. The most impressive scenes of the film are Sophia Loren's reunion with her husband who was now living a seemingly happy life with a Russian woman who had saved his life --- the reunion which was just the beginning of her tragedy. The outstanding script and the direction of De Scica as well as the superb acting of both Sophia and Marcello render "I Girasoli" a masterpiece in Italian realism in cinematography.

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4 out of 6 people found the following review useful:
Highly Recommended Viewing!!, 27 July 1999

Author: Rick L. Mullins (aulait88@aol.com) from Las Vegas, Nv.

Sunflower (1970) 103 mins

Two newly-weds were split up when the husband was forced to fight on the Russian Front. Hearing nothing from him, his wife sets out on a desperate journey across Russia to find out if he has survived.

Includes an excellent score by Henry Mancini, for which he received an Oscar nomination. Mancini at his best!!

Shot on location in Italy and Russia which provides a dramatic background.

Sophia was never more beautiful, Marcello was never more debonair. The on-screen chemistry is classic cinema! Modern films pale in comparison to their simple and genuine portrayals captured under the direction of Vittorio De Sica.

A superb mixture of ingredients by De Sica, right down to the inclusion of Mancini as composer!

I wish I could persuade the copyright holder to re-release this title to video.

At one time I owned a copy of this on VHS, but it was destroyed. Any help locating it again (in any format) is appreciated! Looking for the soundtrack too!

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5 out of 8 people found the following review useful:
Effective bittersweet romance with Loren in top form, 29 August 2000

Author: Arne Andersen (aandersen@landmarkcollege.org) from Putney, VT

The plot is not new - in fact THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG a few years earlier covered the same plot materials - but in the hands of Loren and Mastroianni, it rises above the mundane. Wartime lovers separated with Loren holding onto faith in his survival. She finds him in Russia, having married and fathered a child. She returns to Italy and does the same. He comes to find her but they have both made choices and their life together is no longer possible. Mancini's theme will sound very familiar to most ears even if you didn't know it came from this film - a deserved Oscar nom for Best Score. The production values like that of most foreign language films in the sixties and seventies are quite poor. Bad film stock, poor color, fuzzy camera work and choppy editing. However, the two leads have a remarkable chemistry and Loren is simply majestic in the role - her face is and always was an international treasure. A good romantic film available on video through a private collectors' network - wwww.rarevideo.com.

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1 out of 1 people found the following review useful:
Una donna alla ricerca dell' amore perduto., 19 September 2006

Author: woortmann from Netherlands

"I Girasoli" is certainly one of the best romantic stories in an honest and pure setting in Italy and Russia. It is a dramatic love story of Antonio and Giovana wanting to stay together in the war. The impossibility to hold on to the newly found and sweetest happiness becomes inevitable in the destructive war, where Anoinio is found half frozen by a Russian woman. The accent lies in finding love in warm sunny Italy and loosing this in the freezing cold war thousands of miles away. Although in this new other world there is love too, it is never the same as before. At the end the search for the lost love is completed and in vain when life has changed there lives irreversibly. Un impossibile ritorno al passato.

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