Two Women (Koch)
Picture: D
Sound: D Extras: D Film: B
Sophia Loren is a name still associated with international
glamour and fame, but early in her career in 1960, she received a still very
much earned Best Actress Academy Award for the struggling mother trying to
protect her daughter and survive the chaos of the final weeks of World War II
in the enduring Vittorio De Sica classic Two Women, another classic that
seems to be bouncing around all over the public domain.
This awful version is so old, that the analog video copy
of the monochrome film has turned green and is muddy like projected
Play-Doh. That does not do justice to
the film. It’s Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
is the English dub, though it sounds like Loren dubbed herself, but she won the
Oscar speaking in the original Italian.
It came as a great surprise how good even this version is, as
unwatchable as this copy from Koch happens to be. The film is famous for the title characters being raped by Allied
forces, turning the oversimplified ideas of WWII inside out, but it does not
end there.
The film may not have been as European, writerly, or as
Neo-Realist as De Sica was credited for earlier on, but the film remains a
powerful triumph of storytelling and filmmaking, deserving a full restoration
and return to the proper place of respectability it deserves. Skip this copy.
- Nicholas Sheffo
