I girasoli - 1970

Meaning "The sunflowers" . It's not a war movie, but it's a movie about the war. It's a good film, kind of bitter, but interesting; it's about Giovanna (Sofia Loren) who meets and falls in love with Antonio (Marcello Mastroianni) but he has to leave for the war. She thinks, if we get married, you'll have twelve more days at home, and who knows, war might be over... they get married, but twelve days pass so quickly, and they plan to have him locked up as a madman, to try and avoid the war, but when the scheme is found out he is forced to leave for Russia! She's left without news until the war ends, but nobody can tell her if he's dead of alive: he's missing. A man who knew him tells her he had to leave him: Antonio was dying of cold in the snow, but he knows nothing more. I don't recall that war being twenty years long, but all of a sudden she has grey hair: unwilling to let it go, she goes in search of him: she goes to Russia with the only picture she has of him, after promising his mother to find him and bring him back. She doesn't give up, ever, until finally some women recognize the picture! She arrives at a home to find out that Antonio lives there with the woman that saved his life and their pretty little daughter. She's in shock, but waits for him to come back from work: when he sees him, and she's sure it's him, she runs away, crying, and goes back home where she can tell his mother that he's alive but he won't be coming back. She cries and cries, then she tries to accepts it and live on. She starts going out with a man (and her hair is again dark now...) but Antonio now can't leave it at that. Finally he comes to Italy and calls her: they meet at her new apartment, and he tries to explain to her how terrible that experience was, and how he felt sort of at peace, finally, in that unknown house, but it's difficult for him to make her understand. She replies that once he was well again, and with all his memories back, he should have come back home, in Italy. He tells her he still loves her, that he wants her back, and sure enough she feels for him too, she even wears the earrings he bought for her wedding gift.
She's living with another man now, but that's not as important as the crying they hear at that point. Apparently he waited at least a whole year before coming to her, maybe even more. Time to find another man, to move to another city and find a job, get pregnant... She has a child now, so even if it hurts she tells him they can't ruin the children like that. She has a baby, he has a daughter, it's too late now for them. He goes back to Russia and she cries, for that love that had so little time before the war ruined everything.
Her hair must really depend on her emotions, because now they are grey again.
Well now, one thing is to leave the wife for the pretty blonde that saved you, but to write a few words to his old mother to tell her "I'm alive and well, don't worry about me" never crossed his mind? Just a few words, instead of leaving her too without the notion whether her son was dead or alive. That pain was cruel.
The reason for the title is the big field of sunflowers she sees in Ukraine, while searching for him, and they tell her that underneath them are the bodies of many people that died during that war: Italians, Russians, lots of people that died and were buried there, but she doesn't accept that he might be one of them and keeps looking.