Format: Turner Classic Movies on rockin’ flatscreen.
Because of my job, I’m often tempted to watch a movie while I’m working. I do it often to have some sort of background noise going on. There was a period of time when I watched either Aliens or Master and Commander just about every day for a month. I try not to do a great deal for this blog in this way, though, unless it’s a film I’ve already seen and know well. In the case of a film like A Special Day (or Una Giornata Particolare in the original Italian), that’s absolutely not the case. Since this is in Italian, watching means reading, and you can’t do that with partial attention.
A Special Day takes place on a very specific day in Italian history. On May 8, 1938, a little more than a year before the beginning of World War II, Adolf Hitler traveled to Rome to visit Mussolini. On this day, harried housewife Antonietta (Sophia Loren) stays home to return the family apartment to order after the morning actions of her husband (John Vernon) and their six children have torn the place apart. In the course of her morning, the family pet, a mynah bird named Rosmunda, escapes from her cage and flies across the courtyard to just outside another apartment.
