(C’era una volta). A delightfully innocent, exquisitely lush fantasy starring Omar Sharif and Sophia Loren . . . are we still in Rosi territory? Indeed we are; to be precise, in the seventeenth-century kingdom of Naples. There, a Spanish prince with wicked brown eyes (Sharif) prefers sport to marriage until he encounters a peasant girl, Isabella (Loren), who is both hungry and shrewd. What ensues is a combination of romantic comedy and fairy tale, vernacular farce and spaghetti Western, but as one Italian critic noted, “For Rosi the fairy tale becomes realistic observation. He gladly abandons his two protagonists to talk about the common people, filling the screen with hundreds of faces, all gaunt and marked by poverty.” Loren, gorgeous and gregarious, throws herself into this film that mirrors her own rags-to-riches Cinderella story and gives us the other side of the Italian South—the peasant fable, which is always based in reality.

• Written by Rosi, Tonino Guerra, Raffaelle la Capria, Peppino Patroni Griffi, from a story by Guerra. Photographed by Pasqualino De Santis. With Sophia Loren, Omar Sharif, Dolores Del Rio, Georges Wilson. (103 mins, In Italian/French/English, with English subtitles, Color, 35mm, From Cinecittà Luce S.p.A.)