I gave it a 7.5 out of 10

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

In the 1940s and into the 50s, Vittorio De Sica made quite a name for himself. Although he was a very successful actor, as a director he became one of the big names in the Italian film industry during this period through his so-called neo-realist films. De Sica and a few other directors found their country in ruins following WWII and practically no funds to make films. So they improvised--abandoning fancy sets (most were blown up during the war) and went into the streets filming non-actors. While it sounds destined to fail, De Sica's films of the period became classics with successes like "The Bicycle Thieves", "Umberto D", "The Children are Watching Us" and "Miracle in Milan". Here in "Sunflower", you see De Sica in a much later period--and the film is about as unlike a neo-realist movie as you can get. Here instead of non-names acting in the leads, you've got Marcello Mastroianni and Sophia Loren--the two biggest stars of the Italian cinema. You've also got some location shooting...in the Soviet Union!! This must have cost a fortune and economy clearly was NOT the trademark of this film.The story is a sad one. A guy (Mastroianni) is being drafted into the Italian Fascist army during WWII and he doesn't want to go. He decides to marry a beautiful lady (Loren) and she is soon left home to wait for him. However the man is sent to the Russian Front and never returns. Years pass and she eventually visits the USSR to look for traces of him...and discovers he's alive!!In many ways, the film is reminiscent of the wonderful French film "A Very Long Engagement". Both stories are about women who refuse to believe that their love is dead despite being lost in the war-- though the way both stories play out are very different. As for "Sunflower" it's a very good film though not quite as good as "A Very Long Engagement".The film has generally good direction but, surprisingly, a few camera shots are fuzzy and should have been better as were a few clumsy edits. I wouldn't have expected this with a great director like De Sica. As for the rest of the film, the story is compelling, though a bit slow. I didn't mind the slowness, though some might. Much of this is because many times instead of talking or doing things, the director had the actors use their faces and body language to convey a lot of the story. It's artsy but still I enjoyed it and the music was haunting. As far as the ending goes, it did leave me slightly dissatisfied as I wanted to see Loren's character beat her husband within an inch of his life!! Oh well, you can't win 'em all.By the way, I was very, very surprised that the film crew got permission to make a film with so much of it shot in the Soviet Union. Things weren't exactly friendly at the time between the East and West but somehow they got it done. Also, when they showed Loren's character going about the country unescorted, this did seem a bit unlikely--though who knows? I just assumed Italians and other westerners wouldn't be able to do so back in 1970--perhaps I am wrong.

As another reviewer pointed out this bit of cold war propaganda (pro Soviet) was absurdly impossible. An axis soldier would have been shot period or arrested as a spy and killed slowly in a prison camp.So you have to dismiss the story as absurd as it stands and place it in Iran or Finland or some place where it could have happened. Or just suspend your disbelief.Once you do that you can enjoy this bit of really well done maudlin romance. Loren had to be at the height of her classy beauty in this film (before she was aged for the story).I loved the part where she spots an Italian man---the only handsome well dressed stylish man in any of the Russian scenes. Of course Loren herself is like a super nova star compared to the kerchiefed thick legged Russian women. Italian audiences must have loved this film.I give it a 7 as it is very enjoyable once you deal with the absurd story and the maudlin nature of the movie. As another reviewer states what is so wrong with first class maudlin??

In Naples, in World War II, the local Giovanna (Sophia Loren) has a torrid love affair with the soldier Antonio (Marcello Mastroianni), who is ready to embark to Africa. Giovanna proposes him to get married with her to get a leave of twelve days; then Antonio pretends that he is insane and he is sent to an asylum. However, the doctors discover the farce and they give the option to Antonio to go to the Russian front as volunteer instead of being sued. When Antonio is missing in action in Russia, Giovanna does not accept that he is dead. Years after the end of the war, Giovanna travels to Russia with a picture of Antonio to seek him out in the countryside. When she finds a lead in a village, her hope becomes disappointment with truth about his disappearance. "I Girasoli" is one of the most famous romances of cinema and discloses a beautiful story of love, hope, truth and renounce. Vittorio De Sica explores the chemistry between Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni to the best, supported by a magnificent cinematography and the wonderful soundtrack of Henry Mancini, which certainly is among the most beautiful ones of the cinema history. The screenplay uses much ellipsis, and my remarks are the lack of dates, leaving the viewer without any reference of how many years have passed; further, the dialogs in Russian that are not translated. My vote is eight.Title (Brazil): "Os Girassóis da Rússia" ("The Russia's Sunflowers")

"I Girasoli" is certainly one of the best romantic stories in an honest and pure setting in Italy and Russia. It is a dramatic love story of Antonio and Giovana wanting to stay together in the war. The impossibility to hold on to the newly found and sweetest happiness becomes inevitable in the destructive war, where Anoinio is found half frozen by a Russian woman. The accent lies in finding love in warm sunny Italy and loosing this in the freezing cold war thousands of miles away. Although in this new other world there is love too, it is never the same as before. At the end the search for the lost love is completed and in vain when life has changed there lives irreversibly. Un impossibile ritorno al passato.