Delmer Daves’ dated romance starring Troy Donahue and Suzanne Pleshette may have been forward thinking in 1962 but today seems like a relic from another age. A young American college graduate (Pleshette) flees a conservative college town for Italy and the chance to experience love. She meets a number of men before settling on the graduate student-artist Donahue, never an actor who could convince as a man of letters. They have a lengthy romance during which we enjoy a full tour of Rome and the Italian countryside, including Verona, where Donahue actually attempts to play Romeo to Pleshette’s Juliet. Alas, the lovely Angie Dickinson, playing an experienced (read:evil) wealthy American expatriate returns for Donahue, and Pleshette realizes that she is swimming with sharks. An Italian lothario, and potential deflowerer of Pleshette, explains to us that women are not meant to be free but rather to civilize wild men. A standard happy ending is tacked on.
The film is actually somewhat better than the description given. The photography is beautiful, Angie Dickinson is convincing as a heartbreaker, and some of the dialogue is sophisticated and lively. Best of all, there is a melancholic undertone to the proceedings that suggests that the allure of a continental romance is transient and ultimately beyond the reach of those ready to move forward in life. Donahue’s presence, and the terrible decline he entered afterwards, perfectly captures the mood of impossible youth and beauty yielding to lost opportunities, disappointments, and resignation. The last twenty minutes, which validate a cautious, prudent (Pleshette’s character is named Prudence) life of circumscribed possibilities, presents too definitive an answer. Soon, new young Americans would come to life on screen and in reality that would greatly raise the stakes around these questions, but in 1962, with Kennedy alive and John Wayne as the top drawing star in Hollywood, safe answers still carried the day, even if the youth were longing for adventure. ✰ ✰ ½.
MJM 09-17-2011