Marriage Italian-Style

Marriage Italian Style is a 1964 romantic comedy-drama film directed by Vittorio De Sica, starring Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni. The film was adapted by Leonardo Benvenuti, Renato Castellani, Piero De Bernardi, and Tonino Guerra from the play Filumena Marturano by Eduardo De Filippo. Filumena Marturano had previously been adapted as a 1950 Argentine film. Plot Set during the World War II era, the film follows a cynical but successful 28-year-old businessman named Domenico (Marcello Mastroianni), who, after meeting a naive 17-year-old country girl, Filumena (Sophia Loren), during a bombing outside a Neapolitan brothel, starts an on-again, off-again relationship spanning 22 years. From the very beginning, Filumena is deeply in love with Domenico, but her love is not reciprocated. After Filumena expresses her wish to be solely his woman, Domenico arranges a leased home for her, with Rosalie as a maid and Alfredo (Aldo Puglisi) as the butler, and arranges a job for her in his shop. He eventually takes her into his house as a semi-official mistress under the pretence that she is the niece of Carmela (his mother's former maid) there to take care of his ailing, senile mother. Domenico's mindset about Filumena's past keeps him from taking their relationship seriously. After having fallen for the 20-year-old cashier in his store, Domenico (now 50) plans to marry her. But he finds himself cornered when Filumena feigns illness and, while "on her deathbed", asks him to marry her. Thinking she will be dead in a matter of hours and the marriage won't even be registered, he agrees. After having been proclaimed his legal bride, the shrewd and resourceful Filumena drops the charade of feigning death. This sends Domenico into a fit of rage, as he feels that Filumena tricked him for his money. But Filumena reveals the real reason for the marriage: she did it for the three children that she bore (Umberto, Riccardo, and Michele). As the children were coming of age, she wanted them to have Domenico's family name.