Normally, an actor or actress in a foreign-language film is not the ideal candidate for an Academy Award, inasmuch as his or her English-language "performance" has been dubbed in by an anonymous third party. Such was not the case of Sophia Loren in Two Women ( La Ciociara ), who did her own English dubbing. Adapted by director Vittorio de Sica and Cesar Zavattini from the novel by Alberto Moravia , Two Women is the semi-neorealist account of widow Cesira ( Loren ) and her teen-aged daughter Rosetta ( Eleanor Brown ) as they struggle to survive in war-ravaged Italy. A conventional romantic triangle between mother, daughter and Michele ( Jean-Paul Belmondo ) is barely under way when the war rears its ugly head once more. Seeking shelter in a bombed-out church, Cesira and Rosetta are attacked and raped by a band of Moroccan soldiers — a horrifying sequence, capped by a freeze-frame close-up of Rosetta, her face a taut mask of terror (this image was enough to prompt a virulent "anti-smut" editorial in The Saturday Evening Post ). Once they've recovered from this appalling experience, mother and daughter are offered a ride back to Rome by friendly truck driver Renato Salvatori . Though Cesira had hoped to keep her daughter from compromising herself as a means of survival, she is crushed to discover that Rosetta has given herself to the truck driver in exchange for a pair of stockings. When Cesira and Rosetta finally reconcile, it is a grievous occasion, mourning the death of their mutual love Michele. A last-minute replacement for Anna Magnani , Sophia Loren brought hitherto untapped depths of emotion to her performance in Two Women ; she later insisted that she was utilizing "sensory recall," dredging up memories of her own wartime experiences. — Hal Erickson