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Vittorio Di Sica's Yesterday, Today, And Tomorrow (1963), starring Marcello Mastroianni and Sophia Loren is a very entertaining and artistic film. This is a three segment film, with each segment telling a story about a completely different romantically involved couple, and with very different circumstances in each story. The romantic couple in each story, each segment, is portrayed by Mastroianni and Loren.
The acting performances by Mastroianni and Loren in this film as a whole are outstanding. Each segment of this film, being such a different type story from the others, required them to veritably assume a different personality in each segment. Both Mastroianni and Loren did so very convincingly. This film, and its three divergent story lines, required a real chemistry between these two heavyweights of Italian cinema, which they apparently have. It is really amazing to watch these two fine actors in this film act in unison in each segment, acting as though the persona of the character in each individual segment was conceived and written just for them.
There is no deep "meaning" or esoteric symbolism in this film. It is just great storytelling at its best. "Just spinning a good yarn" times three. Yet, Di sico's excellent direction, and the excellent performances by both Mastroianni and Loren, brings some difficult to comprehend type of cohesion to these three divergent stories, as if each segment was just a part of a comprehensive whole story. I would suppose that this "comprehensive whole story" might just be called "the story of life". Each divergent story segment is a little "slice of life", somehow fitting into the larger "slice of life" that is the whole film.
This film has great artistic merit in that it convincingly portrays, and even celebrates in a way, the very "stuff of life", of everyday life, of your life and mine. This is an artistic film inasmuch it successfully portrays the relentless and indomitable spirit of life, of mundane and ordinary everyday life.
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