Un amor en Roma

Adapted from the novel by Ercole Patti, this is an unusually serious film by Dino Risi without his customary satirical bite but well worth watching nonetheless. American actor Peter Baldwin plays Marcello, a handsome, intelligent man who has great success with women. He dumps temperamental Fulvia, played by Elsa Martinelli and takes up with the tantalising Anna of Mylene Demongeot with whom he becomes besotted. Eventually driven to distraction by her amorality and infidelity he finds the strength to leave her and has a genuine chance of happiness with lovely Eleanora, played by Maria Perschy but trouble is just around the corner...... In lesser hands this could easily be a tacky melodrama but Risi's expert direction of his cast sustains our interest so that the fates of the principals concern us. At the end one senses that Fulvia and Eleanora will fare much better than Anna and Marcello both of whose futures look pretty bleak. Excellent cinematography by Mario Montuori and lovely score by Carlo Rustichelli. This is undoubtedly Baldwin's finest hour before finding success as a TV director while the three leading actresses are excellent, especially Demongeot who has the meatiest role and plays it to the full. Elsa and Maria are no longer with us but Mylene is still working. There is a priceless cameo by Vittorio de Sica as the director of a sword and sandals movie. Although this should strictly be in the 'trivia' section one cannot help mentioning that Baldwin was to become for a few years de Sica's son-in-law. This film cannot fail to strike a chord with those of us who have developed a passion for someone which brings fleeting pleasure but endless pain.

Granted the skill with which director Dino Risi involves us in this melodrama (not his usual comedy) of an aristocrat besotten with a pretty blonde actress he finally dumps, one has to ask from today's perspective whether there is a double standard involved in the depiction of the behavior of the sexes. And whether the intellectual/class distinction in the story between the man's scholarly milieu and the girl's more tawdry show business and moviemaking background is not explored in enough depth. The hero from whose narrative perspective the plot unfolds is shown breaking up with one woman (though he will see more of her later) and teetering on the edge of marrying yet another and he doesn't waste any time jumping into bed with them when he wants. But the girl is supposedly amoral because she has a few relationships with other men that he becomes jealous of. As for the class distinction, we see little evidence of what the man has actually accomplished so his occasional comments on the superficiality of others of the vulgarity of the girl's acting profession come off as perfunctory.

The film is not an absolute masterpiece, but it is absolutely worth seeing. There are three very beautiful actresses, Elsa Martinelli, Mylène Demongeot and Maria Perschy, who interpret their roles very well, all having a relationship with Marcello, the character played by Peter Baldwin. Elsa Martinelli is very convincing as the one who truly loves him and who suffers terribly because she is not loved by him. Mylène Demongeot is very believable as the one who only says she loves him, but is actually a whore who also sleeps with other men. And Maria Perschy is natural in the role of another woman who loves him and is about to marry. The one who appears the most is Anna, the character played by Mylène Demongeot, in probably her best role. In a very small role, as a film director directing a film in the film, funny and sad at the same time, the famous, brilliant Vittorio De Sica. The beautiful music of the film is composed by Carlo Rustichelli. Dino Risi is one of the best film directors, not only Italian, but also from all over the world, with masterpieces such as "Il Sorpasso", "Treasure of San Gennaro", "Straziami ma di baci saziami", "Mordi e fuggi" " and, in particular, the extraordinary film "The Monsters" with Ugo Tognazzi and Vittorio Gassman.

The plot of this little-known but very well-made romantic drama (from the generic title, one could well mistake it for just another example of teen-oriented fluff which proliferated in Italy at this time!) anticipates high-profile works by acclaimed film-makers such as Joseph Losey’s EVA (1962) and John Schlesinger’s Oscar-winning DARLING (1965). Here, the femme fatale-ish heroine (who can’t bring herself to remain faithful to her true love for very long) is played by luscious French starlet Mylene Demongeot – in what is probably her most significant role; the hero by American Peter Baldwin, whom I best recall from THE GHOST (1963) – one of the better examples of Italian Gothic Horror.

As with the afore-mentioned EVA, the heroine has set her sights on a movie career: however, she only seems to be able to secure parts in low-brow peplums (of which Demongeot herself made a few!)…and, amusingly, one of the country’s foremost film-makers – Vittorio De Sica – turns up in a cameo as the flustered director of one of them!! Still, the real protagonist here is Baldwin – who, being an essayist, is made to provide first-person commentary to smooth over occasional gaps in the narrative (the events occur over a number of months at least); in fact, he’s himself involved with two other women during the course of the film – Elsa Martinelli (the film even begins with the two having a row at night in Rome’s famed Piazza di Spagna) and Maria Perschy (who happens to be the intelligent but virtuous daughter of a friend of Baldwin’s father, a lecher who numbers Demongeot among his flings!). Though given obviously subsidiary roles, both Martinelli and Perschy play flesh-and-blood characters rather than mere stereotypes (frustrated with Demongeot’s capricious nature, at one point the hero proposes to upper-class Perschy but is unable to follow it through); the cast also includes Claudio Gora (appearing as Perschy’s father) and, as two of the heroine’s copious conquests, Jacques Sernas and Umberto Orsini.

While the film is adult, perceptive and generally absorbing, it’s not quite in the same league as, say, the comparable work of Michelangelo Antonioni: its main flaw in this regard has to do with the contrived plotting of the latter stages, which renders the whole slightly tiresome by the end; on the other hand, the lighting (alternately gleaming and shadowy) is exquisite throughout – giving LOVE IN ROME not only a pleasingly polished look but a genuine sense of style. Incidentally, given Risi’s reputation for caustic humor, one welcomes the De Sica incident I referred to earlier amid all the gloom, or the subtle yet side-splitting image of a fat middle-aged man apathetically smoking and gulping down food (simultaneously) at a party while Baldwin is frantically trying to reach Demongoet on the phone; there’s also a cute in-joke, wherein the aspiring-actress heroine says she had already appeared in a film called POVERI MA BELLI (1957) – directed by none other than Dino Risi himself! – but that her part had ended up on the cutting-room floor!