Three Coins in the Fountain

By the Fifties, the movie-going public was no longer satisfied with studio versions of far away places. They wanted to see the real thing and Hollywood had to give it to them. The year before Three Coins In a Fountain came out, Paramount had done another Rome based film in Roman Holiday. Though it had that winning romantic team of Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck, Paramount played it on the cheap and wouldn't splurge for color.

Not to be outdone by rivals, Darryl F. Zanuck went whole hog on terrific color cinematography and three romances. Dorothy McGuire, Jean Peters, and Maggie McNamara are three Americans sharing an apartment in Rome. Peters and McNamara work for a U.S. government agency and McGuire is secretary to expatriate novelist Clifton Webb.

The fountain of course is Rome's famous Fountain of Trevi where tourists are lured into throwing their pennies with the promise of good fortune and a return to the eternal city. Frank Sinatra sings the title song over the opening credits and the Four Aces also had a mega-hit out of that tune. I remember as a lad in the Fifties, hearing that constantly on the radio. It was a BIG factor in the success of this film and won an Oscar for composer Jule Styne and lyricist Sammy Cahn.

McNamara and Peters fall for Prince Louis Jourdan and aspiring lawyer and co-worker Rossano Brazzi respectively. They play the continental lovers effortlessly.

20th Century Fox during the 50s toned down Clifton Webb's acerbity in order to make him leading man material. They never quite succeeded, but Dorothy McGuire conveys that she has a deep and abiding affection for Webb.

The usual romantic complications occur, but it all works out in the end as it always does in these films.

But the star is Rome and even seeing it 50 years ago, you'll still want to a pack a bag and see the place after watching this film.

Not much to add to the other comments here, except to say that it may be understandable that this one got a Best Picture nomination in the 1954 Oscar derby if you were able to see a pristine print, with a stereo soundtrack, in a first-class theater as I had the opportunity of doing when it was first released. The opening sequence of numerous fountains in full flood as Frank Sinatra crooned the Oscar-winning title song was just dazzling to those of us Americans who hadn't yet made a Grand Tour of Europe. What followed contained no surprises, certainly, though some eyebrows were raised by the Jean Peters/Rossano Brazzi "illicit" romance. I never understood how Maggie McNamara ever passed muster with any studio's casting director, nor how the makers of this pastiche could have thought that the suavely handsome Louis Jourdan, playing an Italian of noble descent, would finally settle for a manipulative young American whose machinations had, prior to his capitulation, been nakedly revealed. The lovely Ms. McGuire setting her cap for the aging, fastidious old fop, so well incarnated by Mr. Webb, was another of the difficulties even those first audiences had in suspending their disbelief.

But, oh!, those glorious travelogue shots of Rome and Venice. Widescreens, back then, really were worth briefly deserting one's living room "boob tube" and letting one's mind drift into Nirvana as beautiful DeLuxe Color made one believe the world was an impossibly beautiful place. A new DVD version which approximates the original CinemaScope ratio is now available, a distinct improvement over the formatted VHS tape previously available.

"Three Coins in the Fountain" is a romantic film of 1954 that especially appealed to young women (and some men) who dreamed about love matches in the romantic 1950s. Today, it might be called a chick flick by the would-be macho set. It's based on a 1952 novel by John Sedondari, "Coins in the Fountain." He was a Rome-born writer, producer and director who also co-wrote the screenplay for this film. The movie is a light comedy and drama, and is about three American women working in Rome, each of whom seems spurned or ignored at first but then finds "true" love.

The film has a fine cast, and the story is so-so. The movie also spurned a hit song by the same title, sung by Frank Sinatra in the film. It won the Academy Award for best original song. Julie Styne wrote the music and Sammy Cahn the lyrics. The Four Aces turned it into a number one hit on the 1954 U. S. pop chart. Several other recordings were made after that.

While the story is okay, a big plus for the film is its cinematography and scenic shots of and around Rome. The best of these are scenes of some of the many glorious fountains of the eternal city. The granddaddy of them all, the Trevi Fountain, is center stage for the opening and closing.

One interesting aspect of the story is with the lead male and female characters. Clifton Webb plays John Shadwell, an expatriate American who has lived in Rome most of his adult life. Dorothy McGuire plays Miss Frances, his secretary for the past 15 years. That means that she was in Rome since 1939, and the two of them lived through World War II. That would have included the early years when Benito Mussolini's Italy was allied with Nazi Germany, and the later German occupation of Rome. I don't know how Sedondari treated that in his novel, but it seems strange that there's not a hint of the war having just been over less than nine years, or of Miss Frances having been there during that time. It seems that Anita (Jean Peters) and Maria (Maggie McNamara) would have asked Frances about that at some point.

A funny line by Shadwell stands out. He says to Prince Dino di Cessi (played by Louis Jordan), "These girls in love never realize they should be honestly dishonest instead of being dishonestly honest.

Three Coins In The Fountain deftly weaves together three love stories about American secretaries in Rome. Miss Frances (Dorothy McGuire), who has been in Rome for 15 years, lives with a younger woman, Anita Hutchins (Jean Peters), and they're joined by another young woman, Maria Williams (Maggie McNamara), just arrived from the States.

Frances has been in love with her boss, the expatriate American writer, John Frederick Shadwell (Clifton Webb), all these years. Anita gets into a forbidden relationship with Georgio (Rossano Brazzi), a translator who works at her place of employment (a US government agency where office relationships between American girls and local men are taboo). Maria meets a playboy prince (Louis Jourdan), and comes up with a plan to get him interested in her as more than just a prospective conquest.

It's not deep, but it's all very well done, good to look at, fairly witty and generally involving. It's really the nicely-drawn characters, the somewhat sopisticated dialogue, the enjoyable performances that keep you interested, though the scenery is certainly worth the price of admission.

The music of Victor Young adds a great deal to the enjoyment of the film. Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn penned the title tune, sung by Frank Sinatra (offscreen) as musical accompaniment to a prologue that showcases the fountains of Rome.

Dorothy Jeakins designed the attractive fashions for the three women stars.

CinemaScope doesn't have the thrills on TV that it must have had on the big screens of the 1950s, but there is enough in the way of clever writing and attractive acting to interest the viewer. Three Coins In The Fountain is a fine example of colorful, light entertainment.

This film used to be a big ratings draw when it aired on TV. I would hear about discussed among the female members of the households, and eventually the film would get seen. It was in fact the subject of a few news' reports, and several hit songs.

Me, I never got it. What? No phasers? No Captain Kirk or Mister Spock? No lasers or guns ablazing? What the heck? Oh... it's a romance.

Okay, after the initial boyish knee jerk reaction, I would try to take in the film, get bored, and go watch something else on the small portable black and white. Well, eventually I would watch the whole thing (under protest) but found a fondness for it after a while.

It's one of the great old fashioned romances of all time. Not being Italian, nor European of any sort, I see an old fashioned romanticism with the old world, and in a healthy way. We see a kind of sanitized rendition of the young Italian males aggressively going after the female travelers in search of fortune of love. They eventually overcome fears and apprehensions about social class and ideals of what they want and think they want.

It's part of what good romances are all about and do. It is of course a fantasy, and like all good fantasies we see the twists and renditions of hearts' dreams fulfilled.

In films like this we're presented with characters who have lofty ideals and expectations of what they want and think they want. The story unfolds and shows us and them that what it was they were searching for may not be what they thought they wanted. In real life this is often the case, but not always.

Technically; shot using the three stripe process, the colors are marginally muted (a bit of a surprise) but also gives pretty clear imagery. The film, because it is from the 50s, uses primarily master shots to get the story across, and the one action sequence in the film uses maybe two dozen cutaways at most (and like a lot of action sequences, defies some common logic, but hey, it's Hollywood). The composite shots are actually well blended together, but like a lot of composites from the time, the master and background plates don't mesh because of the different lighting schemes. Spectacular interiors, some scenic exteriors, a good slow watch for a Sunday afternoon.

An event film that created a splash among the romantically inclined. I can't find any real flaws in it, but again, it's not really my cup of tea. Give it a chance. You might like it.