TCM’s Tribute to Sophia Loren

Tribute to Sophia Loren (Tuesday, April 21, 8/7c, TCM)

A sex-symbol superstar of the 1960s, who’s still pretty spectacular today at 80, Italian cinema legend Sophia Loren gets the full Turner Classic Movies treatment with a five-movie tribute, including the U.S. premiere of 2013’s Human Voice (8/7c), a short film directed by her son Edoardo Ponti. Adapted from Jean Cocteau’s one-woman play, Voice stars Loren as Angela, on whom we eavesdrop as she conducts a phone conversation with a man who’s about to leave her for another woman. (What is he thinking?)

The salute continues with 1964’s sexy comedy-drama Marriage Italian Style, which earned her an Oscar nomination opposite Marcello Mastroianni; her Oscar-winning performance in 1961’s searing drama Two Women (11/10c); and the 1954 comedy The Gold of Naples. Only the most ardent Loren fan may want to turn in, though, before the showing of 1972’s critically panned film adaptation of the Broadway musical Man of La Mancha (3 am/2c), where she’s only slightly less miscast as the Aldonza to Peter O’Toole’s creaky Don Quixote.