That was an excellent one.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties. It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW is a romantic comedy, which consists of three stories set in different parts of Italy. All three stories are framed in a romantic farce, which examines relationships through common life issues, such as poverty, adultery, sex and religion.Stories about three very different women and the men they attract.Adelina sells black-market cigarettes in Naples. Her husband is unemployed. She tries to avoid a jail sentence at any cost.In Milan, Anna drives a Rolls, is bored, and picks up a writer, who is her lover. She talks dreamily of running off with him until he dents her car. After that, she shows her true face.Mara, who works as a prostitute from her apartment in Rome, turns the head of a naive seminarian. After talking with his grandmother, she wants to help a young man, while her nervous client from Bologna impatiently waiting.A male protagonist is exposed to tragicomic sobering, while a female protagonist is in a kind of inner conflicts, in each of the three stories. That's the point. The different characters of people are exposed to very strange situations, through which they question their relationships.The scenery is very impressive, especially in the first story. That Neapolitan atmosphere in explosion of colors in a narrow streets is truly remarkable. The dialogues are, here and there, trivial and empty. Humor is somewhat forced, but it's pretty luscious. Characterization is not bad at all.Sophia Loren (Adelina Sbaratti, Anna Molteni and Mara) is a temperamental and brave housewife, an elegant and selfish rich woman and a sensitive prostitute who would talk about morality. Yes, Ms. Loren looks divine in each of these women.Marcello Mastroianni (Carmine Sbaratti, Renzo and Augusto Rusconi) is a fertile, but useless husband, a cautious lover and an impatient client, who can not accept the fact that he's in love with a beautiful prostitute. Mr. Mastroianni is mostly a muddled and confused character in each of the three stories.I will say that this is another successful commedia all'italiana

"Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow" was just the kind of crowd-pleasing, feel-good foreign film that appealed to American audiences and the Academy in 1964. It won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film, the second De Sica film to win in that category after "Bicycle Thieves". Of course, this isn't in the same class as that neo-realist masterpiece. It comprised of three short stories, each starring Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni. In the first she is the wife who avoids prison by getting pregnant; in the second she is a rich socialite having an affair with Mastroianni's writer, that is until he crashes her Rolls while in the third she's a Roman prostitute forced into taking a vow of chastity for a week but not beyond doing the striptease that earned the film its reputation for 'sauciness' and each story is named after the character played by Loren. It's all very jolly, sunny and likable but it's hardly Oscar material. Sophia, however, is splendid throughout.

These three stories very "Italian" indeed, are full of good humour, social observation and correct atmosphere. The direction of De Sica is superb, the acting of Mastroianni and Loren is unique and in the second and third stories we recognize the subtle and superior hand of their author, the great Zavattini. The first story takes place in a very typical popular neighbourhood of Naples where a cigarette pedlar and smuggler (Sofia Loren) discovers that the way of not going to jail for failing to pay a fine, is to get pregnant over and over and giving birth to one child after another with the problems this brings to her exhausted husband (Mastroianni). The second story shows us an aristocratic Milanese rich lady who to escape her boring life gets herself a lover on a social stratum lower to hers and finishes by valuing her Rolls Royce car more than her lover. This is perhaps the not so good of the three stories because it lacks some strength in terms of plot. Finally the third story (maybe the best of the three) is sometimes delirious and hallucinating in its very funny rhythm (Loren's acting is fabulous here) and tells us about a luxury prostitute living near the Piazza Navona in Rome who nevertheless has a soft heart and with whom a neighbour young seminarist falls in love while she plays a game of pull and let go with one of her clients who is anxious to take her to bed most unsuccessfully. This story has a surprising end and a fascinating scene of strip-tease (incomplete of course). You'll have a very amusing time watching this movie.

Wasn't too bad, but wasn't the best either. Sophia Loren is smokin' hot in this, like usual, and particularly the strip tease at the end. Little disappointed they stopped some of the tease, such as going from mostly covered down to bra without showing the clothes coming off. I could imagine how Marcello's character is losing his mind watching this. Overall, I'd have to agree that the second vignette was the weakest, and also happened to be the shortest.My biggest issue is the DVD print I watched. I don't know if there's a new edition out, but an academy award winning film should at least be seen in letterbox format, instead of what looks like a poor quality VHS transfer.