Eis it because his mother was a ragazza madre (a single mother) in the Italy of the 1930s that Sophia Loren so wanted to marry? “It’s the dream of my life”, admitted the actress in an interview which illustrates, among other excerpts from interviews and films, the documentary by Julia Brachet broadcast this Monday, June 12 at 10:35 p.m. on Arte.
Born September 20, 1934 in Rome, Sofia Scicolone is the daughter of Romilda Villani and Riccardo Scicolone, who will give his daughter nothing but her name. In her village of Pozzuoli, Sophia is therefore “the bastard”, the “fatherless”, the “daughter of the depraved”.
It was there, about fifteen kilometers from Naples, that she lived a painful childhood with her mother and her sister Anna Maria, born four years after her. All three find themselves immersed in war and misery. “Life was impossible. It was very hard. I was 8 years old and it marked me forever”, confided to the Pointin an interview in 2020, the then 86-year-old actress.
Photo novels
In this trying daily life, Sophia feels an immense love for her mother, a wounded woman who raises her two daughters alone and has had to give up her ambitions as an actress. This blonde and elegant woman, crowned in 1932 an Italian double of Greta Garbo during a competition, turns, that same year, in a film by Salvatore Di Bonito, heroic youth, never aired. Romilda’s dream is stillborn. Did Sophia Loren find motivation there to repair the past, again?
Mother and daughters travel to Rome after 15-year-old Sophia won a regional beauty pageant where she paraded in a dress cut from the dining room curtains. Direction Cineccità, the temple of the 7e italian art. “When we arrived from our village, we tried to survive. We had no money and no realistic prospects for our future,” the actress recalled in Pointin 2020.
Sophia runs through the castings, hounded by Romilda, who scrutinizes the behavior of the other young actresses and scrupulously notes the contact details of the producers. But it is mainly the photo novels that will allow the young girl to work and bring the trio to life.
“They call me Commander »
One day in 1951, as she strolls through the studios, Sophia meets Carlo Ponti, a famous Italian producer – Oscar winner in 1954 for La Strada, by Federico Fellini. Their meeting will be the key that will unlock the destiny of the young Neapolitan, according to the rules that govern relations between men of power and novice actresses.
Carlo Ponti, married and father of a family, is 42 years old. Sophia is 17. Intrigued by this tall young woman trained at the school of photo-novels, he gives her some advice, already interested. He invites her to shorten her nose, which he considers too long. She stands up to him. Seduced, he takes his destiny in hand and models it to his taste as a producer. He makes her lose her accent, changes her diction and her wardrobe. Sophia Scicolone becomes Sophia Loren to simplify a name that no director could remember.
READ ALSODeath of Gina Lollobrigida: the 5 films that marked her careerCarlo and Sophia never leave each other, under the suspicious gaze of Romilda, who reminds her daughter “that a married Italian never leaves his wife”. The young actress nevertheless accepts her illegitimate status and continues the roles: A Roman Sunday (1953), Two nights with Cleopatra (1953), The Merchant of Love (1954), Bread, love, so be it (1956), in which she replaced Gina Lollobrigida, her then rival, seven years her senior.
Quite mediocre comedies and peplums, but which change the ordinary of the three Neapolitans in Rome. Sophia is now the head of the family: “Now I am my mother’s mother and my sister’s mother. They call me Commander Scicolone and depend on me, always. »
The “very attractive” Cary Grant
But the romance with Carlo Ponti is complicated. In this Catholic and Puritan country, their affair goes badly. They decide to go to the United States to be able to love each other freely and conquer American studios. Here is Sophia finally free, far from her mother and close to Ponti, almost like a married woman. “I was 23 when I first came to Hollywood. A wonderful school, and if I had to do it again, I wouldn’t hesitate,” she confided to the Point in 2020.
READ ALSOThe three reasons to mourn Monica VittiIn the United States, everything is bigger, brighter, and you have to live up to the greats. Sophia began to appear on American screens at the end of 1957. In pride and passion, she shares the poster with Frank Sinatra and Cary Grant, who confuses her, at the start of filming, with Gina Lollobrigida. Very quickly, however, the famous actor, aged 53, and who is in his third marriage, fell in love with the 23-year-old Neapolitan.
“He was very attractive, a wonderful actor, a renowned star. I loved him so much. He was very nice and helped me a lot, because I often had difficulty saying my text correctly in English. But whatever we said, he never asked me in marriage, ”she said again to the Point“above all, I was in love with Carlo Ponti and I didn’t want to give up the man I knew to be the love of my life”.
Threats of excommunication
To pull the rug out from under Cary Grant, whose merry-go-round he sees, Ponti succeeds in divorcing his wife, who has remained in Italy, by a legal subterfuge. The judgment is pronounced by a court in Mexico City. In the aftermath, on September 17, 1957, Carlo and Sophia say yes, in Ciudad Juárez, in the state of Chihuahua.
This time, Sophia believes she has achieved her dream: she is married, legitimate, and has a worthy name. The wounds of his mother and his childhood can begin to heal. Alas, a month after the wedding, Carlo Ponti is accused by the Italian Church of bigamy and Sophia of concubinage. The marriage is annulled and they are both threatened with excommunication in their country.
Despite these disappointments, the actress continues her Hollywood career: The lost city (1957) with John Wayne, The Barge of Happiness (1958), where she finds Cary Grant. She made more than ten films in six years. In 1958, she won the prize for best female interpretation at the Venice Film Festival for The Black Orchid, by Martin Ritt. She can finally return to Italy crowned with glory, erasing the humiliation of the annulled marriage.
Anna Magnani’s refusal
Back in the country, Sophia Loren finds Vittorio De Sicca, a Neapolitan like her, who had made her turn, at her beginnings in 1954, in The Gold of Naples. De Sicca, thirty years his senior, loved Sophia all his life “with the love of a father”, as he confessed almost with regret. He will watch over her until her death. “I worked with him for twenty years, it was the perfect match,” confirmed the actress.
The director imposes it in La Ciociara (1962) in place of the famous Anna Magnani, 54, who refused to let the actress play her daughter in the film. At 26, Sophia Loren therefore inherits the title role, a Roman widow who, with her 13-year-old child, flees war and misery…
READ ALSOSophia, Ursula, Claudia and the others… The women of BelmondoFor this film, she will receive the Oscar for Best Actress in 1962. But she is not present to receive the statuette. She didn’t believe it. “I never imagined that all this would happen to me one day. I have always tried to move forward in life in small steps. Then, I persevered, by dint of will, energy and determination”, she summarized in Point in 2020.
A fifty-room villa
In the early 1960s, Sophia and Carlo were at the height of their professional glory, which they savored around the swimming pool of their fifty-room villa. But their personal life remains subject to the injunctions of Italian society. Tenacious, Carlo Ponti decides to apply for French nationality in order to be able to formalize his divorce and marry Sophia Loren. President Pompidou grants her and they marry, in France, on April 9, 1966, almost nine years after the unsuccessful Mexican ceremony.
Sophia will have finally succeeded in repairing this so painful past. Which will make her mother say, a few months before her death, in 1991: “I have been rewarded for all the trouble I have taken, because everything that happens to Sophia, it happens to me: I am Sophia. »
The legitimate couple that Carlo and Sophia now form will have two sons: Carlo Jr., in 1968, and Edoardo, in 1973. It is he who will turn his mother for her moving return to the cinema, in 2020, at 86, in The life ahead, where she plays Madame Rosa, in an adaptation of Romain Gary’s novel. In his novel, Gary writes: “Madame Rosa says that life can be very beautiful, but that we haven’t really found it yet and that in the meantime we must live well. Sophia Loren, with courage and determination, was able to wait.
“Sophia Loren, a special destiny”documentary by Julia Bracher, France, 2018, 52 minutes, Monday June 12, 2023 at 10:35 p.m. on Arte and available on arte.fr until September 16, 2023.
“La Ciociara”Italian film by Vittorio De Sicca, 1960, with Sophia Loren, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Eleonora Brown…, Monday June 12, 2023 at 8:55 p.m.