An unlikely winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, 1963's Ieri, Oggi, Domani (Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow) is a trifling but entertaining three-part fantasy from one of Italy's greatest neo-realist directors, Vittorio de Sica. Miles away from such social comment movies as Shoeshine and Bicycle Thieves, Ieri features two attractive, big-name stars (Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni) in its humorous examination of the power and politics of sexuality. The film is closest in tone to Pietro Germi's satiric social comedies of the same era, typified by Divorce - Italian Style. Well known as a sex symbol, Loren had become the first foreign-language performer to win the Academy Award for Best Actress in a more serious De Sica picture, 1960's Two Women. She reunited with De Sica and Mastroianni for the minor but more focused Marriage Italian Style later that year.