General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20267 min read

A Special Day

A Special Day (Italian: Una giornata particolare) is a 1977 Italian-Canadian drama directed by Ettore Scola, starring Sophia Loren as the housewife Antonietta and Marcello Mastroianni as the radio broadcaster Gabriele, two neighbors who meet by chance in a Rome apartment building on the day of Adolf Hitler's 1938 state visit to Italy.¹^•² Produced by Carlo Ponti, it was presented in competition at the 1977 Cannes Film Festival, won the 1978 Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film, and received two Academy Award nominations.¹^•³

Key fact	Detail
Original title / year	Una giornata particolare, 1977; international title A Special Day¹
Director and writers	Ettore Scola; screenplay by Scola, Ruggero Maccari, and Maurizio Costanzo¹^•²
Setting	A working-class apartment building in Rome on the day of Hitler's state visit to Mussolini in May 1938⁴
Principal cast	Sophia Loren (Antonietta), Marcello Mastroianni (Gabriele), John Vernon (Emanuele, the husband), Françoise Berd (the caretaker)⁵
Key crew	Cinematography Pasqualino De Santis; music Armando Trovajoli; editing Raimondo Crociani; production and set design Luciano Ricceri¹
Major honors	Cannes competition 1977; Golden Globe Best Foreign Film 1978; Oscar nominations for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Actor (Mastroianni); César for Best Foreign Film 1978³^•⁶
Restoration	4K restoration by CSC-Cineteca Nazionale; Premio Venezia Classici for best restored film at the 71st Venice Film Festival (2014)⁷

Spoilers

Story

The film opens with newsreel footage of Hitler's arrival in Rome in May 1938, welcomed by Mussolini and King Victor Emmanuel, followed by scenes of the capital's population turning out for the celebrations.⁸^•⁹ The action then moves to a large working-class apartment building whose residents empty out to attend the parade for the Rome-Berlin Axis alliance.⁴^•¹⁰

Two people remain. Antonietta (Loren) is a weary housewife and mother of six, a supporter of Mussolini, left behind to tend to household duties while her husband Emanuele (John Vernon) takes the children to the parade.²^•¹¹ Across the courtyard lives Gabriele (Mastroianni), a former radio announcer dismissed from the EIAR, the state broadcasting service, on suspicion of homosexuality, who is waiting to be taken into internal exile.⁵^•¹⁰ A bird flying between their windows prompts their first conversation, and over the course of the single day the two strangers confide in each other and form a bond that makes each feel, for the first time, less excluded and less different.⁵

The ending is bleak. When the parade disperses and the tenants return, two plainclothes policemen arrive at Gabriele's apartment to take him to Civitavecchia, from where he is to be shipped to Carbonia, where homosexuals like him were confined; he picks up the suitcase he had packed since morning and leaves without looking up at Antonietta's windows.⁵

Interpretation and legacy

Scholars have read the film as a document on the social climate of consensus-era Fascist Italy, a phase long neglected by Italian cinema, with the historian Paola Valentini describing it as letting viewers look out from the "balcony of history" at the Italy of 1938.²⁰ Millicent Marcus, a scholar of Italian film and fascism, notes that Scola opens with documentary footage of Hitler's visit of 3-8 May 1938 and only after six minutes shifts to the private story, setting up oppositions between history and story, factuality and fiction, public and private.²¹ The film is also studied for its treatment of homosexuality under the Fascist regime and for its use of the radio commentary of the rally as a sonic counterpoint to the two characters' intimacy.⁵^•²²

The film has remained in circulation through restorations. A restoration by CSC-Cineteca Nazionale screened in the Venezia Classici section of the 71st Venice Film Festival in 2014, where it won the Premio Venezia Classici for best restored film.⁷ The Criterion Collection issued a restored 4K digital transfer supervised by Scola on Blu-ray and DVD in 2015, with interviews, two 1977 episodes of The Dick Cavett Show featuring Loren and Mastroianni, and the 2014 short film Human Voice directed by Edoardo Ponti.²³ Reported running times differ across catalogs, from 102 to 116 minutes, with 106 minutes the figure given by Cineuropa, MoMA, and the Spanish film archive ICAA.¹^•²^•²⁴

Date and setting

The film's action takes place during Hitler's state visit to Rome in May 1938, when Hitler came with his chiefs of staff, including Joseph Goebbels and Joachim von Ribbentrop, to meet Mussolini.⁴ Sources disagree on the exact date of the day depicted: the Criterion essay by film critic Deborah Young and several Italian sources give 6 May 1938,⁴^•¹² the Archivio del Cinema Italiano synopsis gives 8 May 1938,⁵ and the Tromsø festival notes 4 May 1938.¹⁰ The building itself is identified as Palazzo Federici, a twelve-story apartment complex on the Viale XXI Aprile in Rome, built during the Fascist period to a design associated with the architect Mario De Renzi; Scola reused the location for his 1995 film Romanzo di un giovane povero.¹²^•¹³

Production

Ettore Scola (1931-2016), who had won the Best Director Award at Cannes in 1976 for Brutti, sporchi e cattivi, wrote the screenplay with Ruggero Maccari and Maurizio Costanzo.⁶^•¹ The film was produced by Carlo Ponti for Compagnia Cinematografica Champion of Rome and Canafox Films of Montreal, making it an Italian-Canadian co-production.¹^•⁵ Pasqualino De Santis shot the film in color with heavily desaturated, sepia-toned imagery, a choice that predates the later fashion for muted color in historical films; the opening newsreel is in black and white.¹⁴^•⁹ Armando Trovajoli wrote the score, and the soundtrack pits the intimate story against the strident official radio broadcasts, speeches, and patriotic songs of the rally.¹^•¹⁵

The cast against type was central to the design: Loren, a screen icon of glamour, plays a mousy housewife in an old robe and slippers, while Mastroianni, the prototypical Latin lover, plays a gay intellectual.⁴ Alessandra Mussolini, the dictator's granddaughter, appears in the supporting role of Maria Luisa, one of Antonietta's children.⁵

Release and reception

The film was shown in competition at the 30th Cannes Film Festival, where it screened on 19 May 1977, and opened in Italian theaters on 12 August 1977; it went on to release widely across Europe and beyond through 1978 and 1979.¹^•¹⁶ On its release it was an immediate box-office success, acclaimed by critics and the public in Italy and throughout Europe.¹⁷

At the 1978 Academy Awards it was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film and Mastroianni for Best Actor.¹⁸ It won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film and the French César for Best Foreign Film in 1978, and in Italy took David di Donatello awards for Best Director (Scola) and Best Actress (Loren) and Nastri d'Argento for Best Actress, Best Score, and Best Screenplay.³^•⁶

American critical response was divided at the time. Vincent Canby of the New York Times praised the teamwork of Loren and Mastroianni and called the film's foundation one of honesty,² while the Washington Post's 1977 review found that the din of political history in the background did more to smother the central encounter than to counterpoint it.¹⁵ Later assessments have been more uniformly favorable: on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a 100% Tomatometer score from 10 reviews and a 92% audience score.¹⁹

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 1970s › Released 1975 to 1979

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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