Marriage Italian Style, in 1964, sees De Sica return behind the camera with a comedy with a tragic flair: a delightful adaptation of Eduardo De Filippo's play “Filumena Marturano,” in which a man leaves his fiancée to go to the deathbed of his mistress. Moved by her condition, he swears to marry her if she recovers. NY Times critic Bosley Crowter at the presentation of Marriage Italian Style in New York in 1964 said: “Whenever Vittorio de Sica gets together with Sophia Loren to make a motion picture, something wonderful happens. It did when he directed her in ‘Gold of Naples,’ ‘Two Women,’ ‘Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow,’ and now it's happened again, in ‘Marriage Italian Style.’ The something wonderful that's happened is the conception and projection of a film so frank and free and understanding of a certain kind of vital woman—and man, too—that it sends you forth from the theater feeling you've known her — and him — all your life.”