The Voyage

Introduction by Edoardo Ponti on June 9

In Vittorio De Sica’s adaptation of Luigi Pirandello’s novella, an elegantly restrained melodrama set in Sicily just before the onset of World War I, Sophia Loren sheds her movie-star glamor in one of her most wrenching performances. She stars as a seamstress who falls ill not long after her husband dies in a freak car accident, and comes under the care of her late husband’s brother (Richard Burton)—her (not so) former lover. Bathed in soft focus and adorned with rich period detail, De Sica’s final film vividly entwines a provocative shuffling of ideas—on class, sex, war, and the slippery connections between love and guilt—and carries an air of ponderous melancholy throughout thanks to Loren’s and Burton’s magnificent performances. 2K DCP by Cinecittà.