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Marcello Mastroianni and Sophia Loren star in three stories about - well, men and women - in "Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow," a Vittorio de Sica film.

The stories vary, with the two stars playing roles that show off their different talents. All three of the stories showcase one of Loren's great talents - her awe-inspiring beauty.

I was lucky to have seen this in Italian with subtitles. The Italian language is so beautiful. I loved hearing it spoken and to see the Italian scenery along with it.

The first story is about a woman who keeps getting pregnant to avoid going to prison for not paying for furniture she purchased. She ends with 7 kids and a husband so worn out he can barely walk. Meanwhile, with each birth, she becomes more beautiful. It's either the longest story or it went on the longest - it's not the most interesting of the three.

The second story involves a rich woman with no regard for anyone but herself and her money, even though she talks a different game entirely to her new boyfriend as they're driving. She keeps bumping into people with her car. When she lets the boyfriend drive, he crashes the car rather than a hit a child, and she has a fit. A real nasty piece of work.

The third story is really the best - Loren is a high-class prostitute who befriends a young man studying for the priesthood. He's staying with his vicious grandmother in the apartment across from hers. The grandmother flings insults at Loren. Meanwhile, one of Loren's steadies, Mastroianni, can't get to first base with her because she's so distracted. This vignette is famous for Loren's hot striptease, which she repeats for Mastroianni again in 1994's "Pret a Porter." Marcello Mastroianni and Sophia Loren are excellent in all of their roles, set against the beauty of the Italian locales. Loren is gorgeous, in fact, beyond gorgeous, particularly in the last sequence. Even today, she manages to dazzle. There's something about her that no American actress can even approximate.

This film may have been a little overrated in its day, but it is certainly well worth seeing.

This very enjoyable film may be a let down for someone expecting the heights of De Sica's Neorealist masterpieces like The Bicycle Thief or Two Women. However it is very funny in parts and is pointedly critical of Italian society in the boom years of the 1960s. Also Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni are absolutely stunning to watch.

For people interested in Italy it is a fascinating commentary on the country that can border on stereotype. Naples (De Sica's hometown) is warm and happy and filled with clever types ready to outwit the system and find their own way to happiness. Milan is cold, rich, and callous. Rome is dominated by the Catholic church and the State with plenty of hypocrisy and corruption. But De Sica finds some humor in all of this.

I found it a little too sentimental but well worth watching. I wish a better (undubbed) print were available. De Sica's career was given a boost by the success of the movie and he would continue to make more great films like The Garden of the Finzi-Contini's and the underrated A Brief Vacation that focus on the injustices of the State and the hardships faced by working people.

These three stories very "Italian" indeed, are full of good humour, social observation and correct atmosphere. The direction of De Sica is superb, the acting of Mastroianni and Loren is unique and in the second and third stories we recognize the subtle and superior hand of their author, the great Zavattini. The first story takes place in a very typical popular neighbourhood of Naples where a cigarette pedlar and smuggler (Sofia Loren) discovers that the way of not going to jail for failing to pay a fine, is to get pregnant over and over and giving birth to one child after another with the problems this brings to her exhausted husband (Mastroianni). The second story shows us an aristocratic Milanese rich lady who to escape her boring life gets herself a lover on a social stratum lower to hers and finishes by valuing her Rolls Royce car more than her lover. This is perhaps the not so good of the three stories because it lacks some strength in terms of plot. Finally the third story (maybe the best of the three) is sometimes delirious and hallucinating in its very funny rhythm (Loren's acting is fabulous here) and tells us about a luxury prostitute living near the Piazza Navona in Rome who nevertheless has a soft heart and with whom a neighbour young seminarist falls in love while she plays a game of pull and let go with one of her clients who is anxious to take her to bed most unsuccessfully. This story has a surprising end and a fascinating scene of strip-tease (incomplete of course). You'll have a very amusing time watching this movie.

Yes, the stories are funny and heart-warming...all three of them. And Sophia Loren ALMOST makes you think she's as mean as the millionairess she portrays, talking of her 'humanity to man' while blowing all other cars off the road, bumping into them at stop signs and screaming at poor Marcello Mastroanni for crashing the Rolls rather than hitting a child. Knowing how long Sophia longed for a child, one felt great sympathy for her as she diapered her many children in order to stay out of jail. Italy had a law similar to the English' of 'pleading her belly' to which Sophia and Marcello conform through the births of seven children. The tale of the young priest, the prostitute and the increasingly frustrated 'client' is very well acted, and you can feel the mounting passion of poor Mastroanni as every act gets interrupted at the worst moment.

Of course, I love looking at the towns of Naples, Milan and Rome with all the old streets 'unspoiled' by the modernization of today. Check this one out for some excellent acting in widely divergent roles for both Loren and Mastroanni. No wonder the Museum of Fine Arts has Mastroanni festivals....one for Loren is equally called for. They both act with their eyes, their mouths and their entire bodies!!!

Italian anthology comedy starring Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni. It's often cited as one of the best films of both stars. There are three stories involving different couples, each played by Loren and Mastroianni. The first has Sophia as a wife who keeps getting pregnant to avoid a jail sentence. It's an amusing story, although it goes on a little long. The second story is about a rich married woman taking a drive with her lover. The segment is pretty dull as it builds up to its punchline. But I suppose that was the point, to make you thing this was an inane soap opera story about whether this woman will choose fortune or love. The question is answered humorously enough but this is still the weakest story in the film. The third story, and the one for which the movie is probably most famous, has Sophia playing a prostitute. Her neighbor's grandson, about to become a priest, falls for Sophia and she must try to set him back on the right path. But, in doing so, she makes a vow that frustrates lustful client Marcello. Sophia's never looked sexier than here and her striptease is legendary.

Of the three stories, the last is the most entertaining but none are bad. Sophia is beautiful and enchanting. She and Marcello are both fun in every segment. It's an enjoyable film, though probably much more so if you are a big fan of Italian cinema to begin with.

There is such a delightful playfulness to this trio of tales about relationships between men and women in Italy. Sophia Loren is in three different roles – a poor mother in Naples who keeps getting pregnant and having children to postpone being jailed for failing to pay debts on her furniture, a rich woman in Naples who has had a one-night stand while her husband is away at a conference and has picked him up the following day in her Rolls-Royce, and a high-class courtesan who does business out of her apartment overlooking Piazza Navone in Rome, attracting the attention of a young man studying to be a priest. I wouldn't say Loren has exceptional range, but she does turn in a solid performance, and plays feisty, haughty, seductive, angry, and bemused pretty well, all while being quite entertaining. Marcello Mastroianni is her counterpart in each tale (one of the clients in the last, not the young man), and is similarly engaging. It was nice to see him so light on his feet as he moved around in that last tale; his expressions were over-the-top (in a good way), and it was funny to see him ask Loren to dress up as a schoolgirl, and then watch her reaction.

The movie feels quintessentially Italian, as the characters are animated and highly expressive. There is also a feeling of genuine humanity and community. There is an honesty here, as each of the stories quite openly acknowledges sexual urges in both men and women as being natural and a positive thing, which is quite refreshing. At the same time, it remains decent and acknowledges a sense of higher morality. In the first tale, Loren's character is tempted but does not sleep with her brother-in-law when her husband can't get her pregnant again, accepts going to jail, and talks to the prisoners there without an ounce of judgment about why they're there. In the second, Mastroianni's character realizes how shallow Loren's is when she's more concerned about damage to her car after they nearly run over a child. In the third, Loren's character realizes that despite an antagonistic relationship with the young man's grandmother (played fantastically by Tina Pica), she has common ground with her, and must persuade the boy to stay on his path. How nice it is that director Vittorio De Sica shows us that these things – lust and morality – can exist side by side, perfectly well.

"Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow" was just the kind of crowd-pleasing, feel-good foreign film that appealed to American audiences and the Academy in 1964. It won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film, the second De Sica film to win in that category after "Bicycle Thieves". Of course, this isn't in the same class as that neo-realist masterpiece. It comprised of three short stories, each starring Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni. In the first she is the wife who avoids prison by getting pregnant; in the second she is a rich socialite having an affair with Mastroianni's writer, that is until he crashes her Rolls while in the third she's a Roman prostitute forced into taking a vow of chastity for a week but not beyond doing the striptease that earned the film its reputation for 'sauciness' and each story is named after the character played by Loren. It's all very jolly, sunny and likable but it's hardly Oscar material. Sophia, however, is splendid throughout.

This is one of the most beautiful comedies I've ever seen, it's simply priceless, three stories are very different but taken together they create one wonderful movie. Sophia and Marcelo in each of three stories give superb acting and each character of this 3 that they play in the movie is different from the other as it can be. I can warmly recommend this movie to anyone who like original comedies and i am sure that you will enjoy as i was.And at the end i can say only that i am sorry because they don't make movies as they use to made. I can compare this movie with some comedies of Billy Wilder or Frank Capra, because on the end of it, you have a warm feeling around your heart and you now that this movie is one of good ways to spend an evening.

1963's "Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow" was, like the previous year's "Boccaccio 70," another anthology feature, this time featuring Sophia Loren with her most frequent leading man, Marcello Mastroianni, starring in all three stories for director Vittorio De Sica. In "Adelina" they are a married couple living in a poverty stricken section of Naples, where she must dodge arrest for nonpayment on furniture by way of pregnancy; "Anna" finds her a bored socialite wed to an often absent industrialist who ultimately chooses wealth over love to Mastroianni's disappointment; and in "Mara" she plays a high priced call girl who vows to spend a week without sex to convince the young man next door to follow the call of the priesthood. Her final reel striptease remains the stuff of legend but is quite tame today, the actress considering it a most pleasing, natural performance. As a 1963 Oscar winner as Best Foreign Film it was a huge success, with both stars reuniting with De Sica for their next picture, "Marriage Italian Style."

YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW is a romantic comedy, which consists of three stories set in different parts of Italy. All three stories are framed in a romantic farce, which examines relationships through common life issues, such as poverty, adultery, sex and religion.

Stories about three very different women and the men they attract.

Adelina sells black-market cigarettes in Naples. Her husband is unemployed. She tries to avoid a jail sentence at any cost.

In Milan, Anna drives a Rolls, is bored, and picks up a writer, who is her lover. She talks dreamily of running off with him until he dents her car. After that, she shows her true face.

Mara, who works as a prostitute from her apartment in Rome, turns the head of a naive seminarian. After talking with his grandmother, she wants to help a young man, while her nervous client from Bologna impatiently waiting.

A male protagonist is exposed to tragicomic sobering, while a female protagonist is in a kind of inner conflicts, in each of the three stories. That's the point. The different characters of people are exposed to very strange situations, through which they question their relationships.

The scenery is very impressive, especially in the first story. That Neapolitan atmosphere in explosion of colors in a narrow streets is truly remarkable. The dialogues are, here and there, trivial and empty. Humor is somewhat forced, but it's pretty luscious. Characterization is not bad at all.

Sophia Loren (Adelina Sbaratti, Anna Molteni and Mara) is a temperamental and brave housewife, an elegant and selfish rich woman and a sensitive prostitute who would talk about morality. Yes, Ms. Loren looks divine in each of these women.

Marcello Mastroianni (Carmine Sbaratti, Renzo and Augusto Rusconi) is a fertile, but useless husband, a cautious lover and an impatient client, who can not accept the fact that he's in love with a beautiful prostitute. Mr. Mastroianni is mostly a muddled and confused character in each of the three stories.

I will say that this is another successful commedia all'italiana

By the time the 60's rolled around, de Sica had pretty much lost his touch. There is a perfunctory quality to the storytelling here: the first segment is just a riff on a legal loophole involving pregnancy, the second is a very unfunny little tale of a rich woman who doesn't know what she wants and the third despite the great talents of Mastroianni and Loren is very forgettable (except for the interrupted striptease at the end). I had the feeling of desperate men looking for a script, any script, to shoot a movie with. Product instead of artistry.

Two great performers of the Italian screen, Marcello Mastroianni and Sophia Loren, star in this earthy three-episode film, directed by Vittorio De Sica and tailor-made for the two stars. The success of this film led to the making of MARRIAGE, Italian STYLE a year later. In the first of the three comic vignettes Sophia is a black marketeer in Naples who discovers that a pregnant woman cannot be put in jail and so tries to maintain perpetual pregnancy. Poor fatigued husband Mastroianni is barely up to the task, however, and this fact provides much of the humor. The middle episode, the least effective, has Loren as a Milanese rich-bitch of liberal attitudes but who likes to plow into other people's cars. In the last episode Sophia is a Roman prostitute, Mastroianni is her sex-crazed customer. Part of the story is about how she unwittingly almost destroys the vocation of a seminarian living in an apartment across the terrace. Seminarians, surrender!

Addendum: in 2005 a new DVD release in letterbox format allows us to see the movie in its original wide-screen CinemaScope ratio. It has the original Italian language version with an English-tract option and a subtitle option.

Three different stories of Italian social mores are presented. In "Adelina", unemployed Carmine Sbaratti and his wife Adelina Sbaratti survive through Adelina selling black market cigarettes on the street. They are unable to pay for the furniture they bought (which is under Adelina's name), but are able to avoid the bailiff when he comes for the money or to repossess.

Italian films of the 1960s... the stories were good, the colors were interesting (often their films had a much lower budget than the American films of the same time). What really stands out is how much the films were used to show Rome, Naples and other cities. The Italian film industry of the 1960s was like a constant tourism campaign. Was this intentional? I do not know. But I suppose if you have some of the most beautiful cities in the world, you may as well flaunt them.

If the readers may permit a small intro, sounds contradictory a cinephile like me after has been watched 11.880 movies never got a chance to see this Italian classic of the gorgeous Sophia Loren and the lucky Mastroianni, the answer is quite simple I'd grow up watching commercial TV whereof didn't aired those Art movies from Italy, now I have my experience in high definition Blu-Ray, just great.

The Movie is split in three segments always with the leading cast Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni, the first one takes place at poor neighborhood on Naples, Adelina has a hard life selling smuggled cigarettes on street, due his husband Carmine (Mastroianni) didn't get a job, Adelina is caught by customs authorities, aftermaths she faces a trial and had to pay an expensive penalty which she can't pay, so she will pass a unpleasant stay at jail, fortunately she was pregnancy, in such situation the law postpone the sentence until she got a baby, thus to avoid the prison every year she has another baby, Adelina already got seven children and one more the sentence expires, sadly his weak husband is drained and even having a sexual desire the undermined "Friend" didn't get erect to make another baby, really funny if it wasn't tragic.

The second segment moved to wealthy Milano where Sophia plays Anna a wife of a richest business man, how he is an workaholic, Anna got sexual pleasure upon a poor lover Renzo (Mastroianni) who wondering why so beautiful and sophisticated lady will be get some sexual interest in a John Doe like him, meanwhile Anna apparently seems to a hard felling over Renzo for an upcoming strong affair, driving her brand new Rolls Royce Renzo distract in steering wheel and comes to collide in a machine at road, aftermaths...., well it' was a weakest feature.

On Third segment supposed takes place at Rome-Lazio the stunning eye-candy Mara (Loren) used to be dressing is sexy outfits draw attention of Umberto a newbie applicant to a priest on the next door apartment, Mara actually is that girl bountiful sexy attributes who usually serves costumers providing many sexual favors in exchange of money, do you are mean, one of them is the passionate Augusto (Mastroianni) a kind of guy addicted in sexual fantasies, soon Umberto enchants by Mara and is willing quit to be priest aiming for an engagement with Mara, Umberto's grandmother pleads to Mara overcame the plight, then she promises a his Saint protector if Umberto goes back to seminary she'll be absence of sexy to fifteen days to the August's anguish that see Mara make a sexiest strip-tease as never seen before and she remembering of his promise already lighting candles, quite sure the best segment.

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First watch: 2023 / How many: 1 / Source: Blu-Ray / Rating: 8.

I presume the Italians once found all this hilarious and maybe some of the older ones still have a chuckle but I wouldn't expect many of the young or hardly any non Italians to find the antics on display here very amusing. It has to be said that the first segment does look ravishing as a brilliant Blu-ray widescreen picture illuminates tumultuous crowds thronging the streets, the steps and the squares. Whether it is right and proper to so convey a city as poor and desperate as Naples is another matter. The tale itself goes on and on before we slip into another all about cars and privilege and abuse of power (so funny!) and then the final section, which is, at first, not so bad. Sophia Loren on top form and in and out of skimpy clothing, as she is throughout, taunts Marcello Mastroianni, as she does throughout but here we have a young fledgling priest across the rooftop to also tease and maybe introduce to prostitution. But, no Marcello is reduced to a yapping lap dog and the role of abused side-kick he adopts all the film whilst hypocrisy moves into top gear and once upon a time Italians rolled in their seats at such stupidity as their various government officials made various deals between each other and made certain that the people on the streets, stayed there (with a smile on their face).

The three episodes are very different from each other both in character and circumstances, as the first one, the longest, is from Sophia Loren's own grassroots in the poor quarters of Naples, the second, the shortest, dealing with the ennui of rich people in Milan. and the third, being an excellent script by Cesare Zavattini., showing the interior of the life of a well off prostitute in Rome and her traffic, involving a seminarist studying to become a priest, who because of her finds himself in an existentialist crisis and wants to escape to the foreign legion, while Sophia Loren turns to the opposite of what she is and actually shows talents for a saint in respectable psychology. Although the first episode is the best and most hilarious as a perfect comedy, the third is the most humanly interesting and well written. It is Vittorio de Sica, Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni all three at their best, and of course Cesare Zavattini adds excellence to it. I saw it 50 years ago, and it was delightful to see it again. although I remembered it well, which happened to be on the very day of Marcello Mastroianni's death in 1996 at 72.

"Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow" is certainly not the pinnacle of the oeuvre of Vittorio de Sica. Movies such as "Bicyclethieves" (1948) and "Umberto D" (1952) are held in much higher esteem. On the other hand watching this bittersweet comedy isn't wasting your time either. Responsible for this are to a great extent the two lead actors Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni, big stars already and acting at the top of their abilities. Fourteen years later the chemistry between these two was still there in "Una giornata particolare" (1977, Ettore Scola).

"Yesterday. Today and Tomorrow" is an episode movie. Every episode is about the relationship between a man (Mastroanni) and a woman (Loren). In every episode the woman is firmly in control. In this respects the film is very much like an episode film such as "Boccaccio 70" (1962, De Sica, Fellini, Visconti and Monicelli) in which De Sica was responsible for one episode featuring also Sophia Loren.

In "Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow" the episodes are linked to Italian cities.

The first espisode is linked to Naples in the South of Italy. We see poverty, but we also see solidarity. When the couple has debts and a bailiff comes by, all the furniture has been stored in the neighborhood, so there is nothing to confiscate. In this episode the woman is above all mother. However, that does not mean that the eroticism is hard to find. Sophia Loren makes very clear that making love is not only to get pregnant but is also fun.

The second episode is linked to Milan in the North. The woman is the wife of a rich industrialist. During a car ride with her lover she keeps saying that she is bored and money means nothing to her. The way she acts contradicts at least the latter part of the previous sentence. Unlike the first episode the relationship between man and woman in this episode is empty and cold. This shortest episode of the three has much in common with films that Michelangelo Antonio made around the same time ("La notte" (1961) and "Eclypse" (1962)). To accentuate the coldness of the bourgeoisie de Sica adds images of washerwomen at the river Po and a freckled little boy selling flowers along the road.

The third episode is linked with Rome in the middle of Italy. It is maybe the least bittersweet and most comedy of all the episodes. It certainly is the most well known of the three due to the striptease that Sophia Loren, playing an expensive call girl, gives to her regular customer Marcello Mastroianni.

Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni, they were a wonderful, magnificent couple, perhaps the greatest pair of actors in the history of the cinema. They are both super-charming and very different (chameleonic) in these 3 different episodes. Very beautiful Sophia, the most beautiful of all her other films. Vittorio De Sica, one of the greatest film directors ever, a very gifted artist, he knew life so well, like nobody else, and he knew those special secrets to translate true life, with joy, humor and sadness, on screen, a great conductor of actors.

Oscar-winning Italian film from Vittorio De Sica, wildly overrated in its day, now a faded piece of fluff. Three portraits of Italian womanhood, each featuring Sophia Loren in the lead: Adelina is a saleswoman on the black market who dodges the police through pregnancy (they can't lock her up if she's with child), resulting in seven bambinos and bambinas; Anna is the wealthy wife of an industrialist at an impasse with her frustrated lover; Mara is a prostitute who becomes involved in the troubles of her neighbors, which frustrates her horny client waiting in the bedroom. Marcello Mastroianni plays the men in Loren's lives, however the expected sparks between the two charismatic stars fail to arrive (this seems a perfunctory screen-combination). Giuseppe Rotunno's cinematography is especially pretty in the third chapter (by far the best of the lot), and Armando Trovajoli has composed a nice background score; otherwise, a surprisingly unfunny tease, with more shouting than lovemaking. ** from ****