The Film Experience

by Eric Blume

Marcello Mastroianni’s 1977 Best Actor Oscar nomination for Ettore Scola’s film A Special Day was one of the first examples of a straight actors being recognized for playing a gay role. Prior to that, we’d only had Peter Finch in Sunday Bloody Sunday and Al Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon, and neither of those actors had such an entrenched persona of the “macho lover” as did Mastroianni.

A Special Day gives us not just one Italian cinema icon playing against type, but two...

Sophia Loren, one of the sexiest women to ever grace a screen, plays opposite Mastroianni in this deceptively simple but layered and surprising two-hander. The movie takes place in one day, May 4, 1938, when Hitler visits Rome for time with Mussolini. Loren is a dowdy housewife and mother of six young children; Mastroianni is a gay radio broadcaster who has lost his job for being a “subversive” and will be deported to Sardinia. They live across from each other in a large tenement building, and while everyone else is out at rallies around the city, the two of them share a day that saves them both.

Scola creates a perfect blend of chamber drama and political film. The main ideological thrust is a profile of two people whom the government and the patriarchy have firmly shoved down. The fascism that has swept both countries (which Loren’s character has initially bought into hook, line, and sinker) enforces that women aren’t equal to men, and that certain men aren’t equal to others.

Before we tackle all things gay, a few thoughts on the film. Scola’s work here is deeply detailed…he has small bits of business for the actors, and he puts elegant touches on the metaphors (a bird getting loose from its cage should feel like an eyeroll, but not in Scola’s hands). He makes smarter use of the production design in both apartments than any director I can recently recall. He works with cinematographer Pasqualino De Santis to achieve a unique sepia palette that is gorgeous and evocative. And in a very smart move that could also tip towards cliché, he uses actual radio broadcasts of the rallies as a sort of revolting soundtrack against the lovely drama playing within the walls. His blocking is sublime, finding endless ways to highlight where his characters’ emotions are by framing alone. And finally, of course, he has the benefit of two of cinema’s greatest faces.

Is this Sophia Loren’s greatest performance? It would be tough to argue otherwise. She is marvelously direct in this movie, and she manages her “de-glam” without any fuss. You never feel like she’s playing down, or dressing down, or trying to prove she’s an actress. Loren sees the dignity and integrity of this character, but she’s smart enough to never play those qualities. She becomes erotic in front of us in this movie as she strips away her character’s false nobility. The ways in which Loren and Mastroianni lean into each other in this movie are sometimes breathtaking to witness.

Is this Marcelo Mastroianni’s greatest performance? No, it’s not, but it ranks up there with his best. Mastroianni was without hyperbole one of the greatest actors to stand in front of a camera. His work in his two most famous Fellini collaborations, La Dolce Vita and 8-1/2, are of course legendary. But for my money his work in Il Bell’Antonio and especially Divorce Italian Style are all-timers. In A Special Day, like Loren, he resists playing to any cliché of his against-type casting. He makes no stereotypical flourishes. Mastroianni creates a fully formed flesh and blood character here. We find him on the brink of suicide, but then discover that he’s not a tragic gay character; he’s full of life, seeking laughter and joy, sometimes childlike, sometimes adult and sexy.

The film makes clear that his character, Gabriele, has had love with other men. In a lovely and surprising piece of writing, he claims that he is, in fact, not anti-fascist, but that “fascism is anti-me”. In 1938, Gabriele does believe somewhere that what his government tells him is true; you can see him struggle with the shame people are making him feel, while not losing himself and his identity.

Modern day audiences will wince at a few lines and situations, surely, but the fact is that this film stays true to a 1938 reality as told in a 1977 sensibility. Within those contexts, the film is extraordinary in its empathy and humanity, without ever for one moment pretending it's being “noble” about it. Gabriele just “is” who he is.

The biggest gap of credulity comes when the characters have sex. Afterwards, Loren claims she never knew it could be like that, while he claims that just because he is the way he is doesn’t mean he doesn’t know how to make love to a woman. Gay men are pretty amazing, and we’re surprisingly good at a lot of things, but expertly servicing vagina isn’t one of them. That story beat feels like something put into the film to make audiences more comfortable, and it doesn’t play believably in 1938, 1977, or 2023.

BUT, there is an incredible moment leading into that scene where Loren moves his hand to her breast, and Mastroianni plays it so powerfully. You feel a very complex and truthful pull within him where he is neither disgusted nor aroused, and you see him make the decision to connect further with this woman. He sees her in that moment, her desperation, her need for love. It’s a moment where sexuality is both confronted and transcended in a way that is really interesting.

It's a shame Mastroianni didn’t win an Oscar for this performance. The performance that won Best Actor in 1977, Richard Dreyfuss in The Goodbye Girl, has aged like a baguette. Mastroianni gives us a gay man with complexity, depth, pain, humor, and substance, and his dance with Loren in this film is the stuff movie dreams are made of.

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