Sophia Loren & Marcello Mastroianni in Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow (1963, dir Vittorio de Sica)

Sophia Loren & Eleonora Brown in Two Women (1960, dir. Vittorio de Sica)

“I am basically an unhappy man. Life gives me always the impression of cruelty. I read the newspaper - crimes, murders, divorces, and so on. I do not find evidence of sincerity or solidarity there. I love humanity, I trust humanity, but humanity has a way of disillusioning me. The pictures I direct are nearly always melancholy. This comes from the contrast between my love and my disillusion. I am an optimist. I love life. I seek perfection. If my art seems pessimistic, it is a consequence of my continuing optimism and its disillusion.”

-Vittorio de Sica, New Yorker, June 1957

Sophia Loren in The Condemned of Altona (1962, dir. Vittorio De Sica)

Photo by Herbert List (via)