Pane, amore e...

I came to this film 65 years after it was made. Sophia Loren is a phenomenon, and if you watch "The Life Ahead" before you watch this, her extraordinary contribution to world cinema is even more apparent. This is Italy less than a decade after the end of World War II, yet the film is apolitical and concentrates on the lives of real people trying to make their way in a nation that suffered enormously from war but also from its own delusions and acquiescence to the "charms" of fascism.