Sophia Loren: Reshaping Femininity

Exclusive to BFI Player, a video essay exploring Sophia Loren’s 60s and 70s filmography, and how her work shook up Italian gender roles.

An icon of continental glamour, Sophia Loren's films helped portray post-war Italy as a land of exotic sexuality and permissiveness. Yet Loren's characters - in films such as Boccaccio '70, Marriage, Italian Style and Yesterday, Tomorrow and Today - represent a more nuanced take on womens' lives and desires than the stereotype of the "shapely star" allowed.

In this video essay - made exclusively for BFI Player - filmmaker Maha Al-Badrawi explains how Loren's 60s and 70s filmography both represented post-war Catholic Italy's expectations and subverted them. Her work challenged a social context that held women up as saintly or sexy, shook up Italian gender roles and showed Loren to a cultural export that truly represented the complexity of her country.