Film

Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

Name: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
Genre: Comedy, Romance
Released: 1963
Cast: Sophia Loren, Marcello Mastroianni, Aldo Giuffrè, Agostino Salvietti, Lino Mattera

Comedy
Light-hearted
Dip in and out

Three linked stories of Italian women—a street-smart neapolitan, a bored housewife, a high-class call girl—each navigating love, desire, and survival through wit and charm. Sophia Loren is luminous across all three roles. It's stylish, bittersweet, and endlessly watchable: less about plot than about watching brilliant actors find humanity in every scene.

TMDb rating

3.7

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you enjoy sly, episodic comedy where a sharp performer and a co-star who plays it straight can turn a small domestic scheme into delightful mischief, and you don't mind the satire having a wink.

Skip it if you want one story with a steady throughline; these are three separate tales of differing temperature, and at nearly two hours the switches can feel like many resets.

What it asks of you: Three self-contained chapters, each with its own city and mood, so it asks for patience to re-tune every time, and a willingness to let light, breezy episodes stay breezy.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

8½1963

Fellini's masterpiece about a director's creative crisis, shot the same year. Loren appears briefly, but the real draw is the cascading surrealism and the portrait of Rome—sensual, absurd, profound.

But It's deliberately chaotic and dreamlike. If you need narrative clarity or a three-act structure, this will frustrate you.

Two Women1960

Loren in a devastating wartime drama opposite Jean-Paul Belmondo. Shows the full range of her talent when freed from comedy—raw, tragic, unforgettable.

But It's heavy and painful in ways that have nothing to do with entertainment. Not a night out; a reckoning.

La Dolce Vita1960

Marcello Mastroianni in Fellini's Rome, a film about beauty and emptiness that influenced everything after it. If you love the texture and glamour of *Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow*, this is where it comes from.

But Three hours of gorgeous ennui. The pacing is deliberate; some will call it boring.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Stalker1979

Both are films about three human states of wanting. One is playful and Italian, the other is austere and Russian, but the DNA is the same: watching what desire looks like when you strip away everything else.

Tarkovsky's science fiction meditation on desire and spiritual yearning. A character leads two men into a mysterious zone toward a room rumored to grant wishes. It's a trilogy of internal states—obsession, skepticism, faith—told through landscape and silence.

But It's 163 minutes of deliberate pacing, long takes, and minimal dialogue. If you want narrative momentum or plot resolution, this will test your patience severely.

Marriage Italian Style1964

Loren and Mastroianni reunited the year after this film, in a comedy about a decades-long affair coming to a head. Warm, funny, and genuinely moving about commitment and desire.

But The tone shifts between farce and sentiment. It can feel uneven if you're not in the mood for tonal messiness.

Breakfast at Tiffany's1961

Audrey Hepburn as a woman performing a version of herself for survival—the same engine as Loren's three roles here, but in New York and in a different register. Stylish and bittersweet.

But It's been canonized so thoroughly that it can feel precious or dated on first watch.

The Pink Panther1963

Released the same year, with Marcello Mastroianni opposite Peter Sellers. A caper about desire and performance, lighter than Fellini but with real sophistication and charm.

But The plot is thin and the comedy dated. Sellers carries it, but not everyone finds his style of absurdism funny.

Contempt1963

Godard's film about a marriage collapsing on a film set in Italy—same year, same country, same texture of Mediterranean glamour undermined by human failure.

But It's austere and intellectual. Long takes, minimal dialogue, a rejection of conventional cinema that asks patience.

Creature Comforts1989

Aardman's stop-motion short about zoo animals interviewed about contentment. A completely different register, but it shares the episodic structure and gentle philosophy: three portraits of different lives and desires.

But It's a seven-minute short, not a feature. Contextually jarring if you're watching a full evening of narrative film.

The Best of Everything1959

Joan Crawford and a ensemble cast navigating work, romance, and ambition in New York. American equivalent of the same tone: sophisticated women, fractured stories, period glamour.

But It's earnest and melodramatic in a way that can read as dated. The emotional beats are familiar now.

Passion2013

Both use a woman's strategic performance of different identities as their engine, but *Passion* is operatic where this film is wry. You learn what the tonal registers of the same idea can be.

A Turkish miniseries about a woman escaping her past by posing as a dead woman's sister. Class, identity, deception, and the performance of self—the same themes as Loren's three roles, but as a twelve-hour immersion into one elaborate lie.

But It's in Turkish with subtitles. It's also wildly melodramatic and asks you to accept increasingly baroque plot turns without cynicism.