(1960)

Submitted by Don P

The Italian language film that won Sophia Loren an Oscar.

During World War II in Rome, a widow named Cesira (Sophia Loren) takes her daughter to a small town in the mountains to await liberation by the allies.  A villager named Michele (Jean Paul Belmondo) shows romantic interest in her but is “drafted” by the Germans to be a guide in the mountains.  Cesira later learns he was killed by the Germans.   The liberation comes at last and on their way home to Rome the two women are raped by…..Allied soldiers from Morocco.  The daughter goes numb from shock and the two women ultimately make it home.  Cesira finally tells her daughter that Michele died and her daughter snaps out of it by weeping for someone else.