La Ciociara (Two Women) by Vittorio De Sica: a dissection of its darkest scene

Rome, summer of 1943. It’s raining bombs on the capital. Cesira, a widowed shopkeeper takes her daughter Rosetta by the hand and returns to her roots, to Lazio and its stone villages. A Ciociara is a woman who wears ciocie, a kind of regional, traditional footwear with wooden soles and leather straps. Vittorio De Sica attempts to break down this rural affiliation.

The journey (the train, the trek, the dirt roads, the farming hinterland) leads Cesira to where she feels safe. Carlo Montuori’s photography, aglow in the restoration, infuses a Southern light, both dense and reassuring. Cesira takes off her shoes upon reaching her native soil as the land gives her confidence.

Peace is nearing, the Allied troops are moving forward and danger seems to be dissipating, which is when the director chooses to insert the irreparable. In a church of St. Euphemia, a refuge by definition, Cesira and Rosetta are raped by soldiers of the advancing forces. De Sica films what no Hollywood movie could show at that time. These are events inspired by real war crimes committed in this region in 1944, which had been largely buried. The violence is most vivid in the unseen, in Sofia Loren’s face when she understands what is happening to her daughter. 

Anna Magnani was slated to play the role of Cesira, while the younger Sofia Loren was going to play the daughter. The two actresses changed roles and the director explains why he wanted to portray a younger girl, “to better underline the monstrous impact of war. The historic truth is that the vast majority of victims were young girls.”