As the Oscars are imminent, I do hope that King’s Speech continues being the favourite at the ceremony. In the meantime, below is a famous extract from Vittorio de Sica’s 1963 tour-de-force, Ieri, Oggi, Domani that won an Oscar as the Best Foreign Film in 1965. I do recommend reading the Italian Wiki page using a translation tool, as it gives ample information about the film. The narrative connects three novellas, by Eduardo de Filippo, Alberto Moravia, and Cesare Zavattini, each of stories unravelling in three large Italian cities: Rome, Milan, and Naples.
This “striptease scene” with Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni (who collected a bunch of awards for his performance in this film) was later quoted in Robert Altman’s Prêt-à-Porter and in Adrian Lyne’s 9 and 1/2 Weeks. But not many of you probably know that it was also used in the animated music video to a song Che T’Aggia Di, a duet by Adriano Celentano and Mina Mazzini. Not only that, the animation was inspired by Scrooge McDuck comic stips. Altogether, de Sica’s much-loved scene and McDuck imagery made a memorable contribution to pop-music videos.
