O Candelabro Italiano

A wonderful romantic movie that in my view is highly underrated. While this is by no means a great film, it is hard to find much better if you're in the mood for pure romantic escapism. Pleshette, Dickinson, and of course Donahue are a feast for the eyes. The sets are gorgeous, particularly Angie Dickinson's place. To wear those clothes they wore and have a chic little dinner in an apartment like that we can only fantasize about in this day and age. The scenery of Italy takes back seat to nothing in this film but for my money the greatest scene is at the romantic little restaurant when the singer sings "Al di La". Folks, buy it or rent it because you will never see this type of movie on the big screen anymore.

The first thing you have to ask yourself about this film is is it a travelogue about Rome or is it a a romance movie??? Eighty percent of the film is Troy Donahue and Suzanne Pleshette riding around Rome on a motor scooter while the camera pans all the historical sights in Rome. I have never learned so much about Rome all rolled up into one film!!! Troy Donahue, who was at the peak of his career in soap operas when this film was made gives another super soaper-doaper heart throb performance. Donahue was riding high with soapers like "Imitation of Life", "Parrish", "Susan Slade" and "A Summer Place"......the following year he was another hearthrob in the light headed "Palm Springs Weekend" with Stephanie Powers. In Rome Adventure Donahue is a student mired in Rome in a love mixup with the lovely Angie Dickinson and a young, very young Suzanne Pleshette. Who does he like better...sort of hard to figure at points in the film....Donahue runs around the entire film chasing both women. Rosanno Brazzi plays a very suave Italian gentlemen who is of wealth in Rome and tries to fall in love with Pleshette but he appears to be many years older than her.....it just wont work with a 20 year age difference!!! Substance wise this film did not give Brazzi the actor appeal he showed in "South Pacific"......in that film he was the hearthrob.....the famous "Al Di La" song rang out throughout the whole film and was a record hit in the US in 1962 from the movie soundtrack. All in all this film is a soaper special......teenage and young girls no doubt flocked to the theaters to see Donahue in 62 at the height of his career. Angie Dickinson had second fiddle in this film and you wonder how she liked playing second fiddle to Pleshette. The venerable Constance Ford, who usually plays a mother from hell is top notch as the owner of a book store in Rome where Pleshette gets a job....she was always a Delmer Daves favorite for his soap operas. Check out her voracious, aggressive dog..... This is a film that Warren Beatty probably could have played at the time too.....he and Donahue were top Hollywood hearthrobs at this time in the early 60s.....however, Beatty usually chose much more complex characters with mixed emotions like in "Splendor in the Grass" and "All Fall Down".......as for Rome Adventure cook up some popcorn and relax to a nice little love story from the early 60s when romance was more on the sweet side.

Prudence Bell (Suzanne Pleshette) travels to Italy to discover adventure and finds Don Porter (Troy Donahue) and love. As they explore the areas around Rome, viewers are treated to some idyllic scenery. Their relationship has its ups and downs, especially when Don's former flame, played by Angie Dickinson, reenters his life.

Through it all, the song "Al di la" is featured, and the film's grade deserves two bumps just for that. It may be the perfect accompaniment to a love story set in Italy. Even Al Hirt, who appears as a surprisingly engaging trumpeter in the film, plays a jazz rendition.

This itinerant love story with a peripatetic plot loses focus on occasion, but it always come back to Prudence, where it belongs. Pleshette's beautiful quirkiness feels grounded in true love. No surprise, then, that Pleshette and Donahue would marry later.

An uncreative ending deserves the loss of one grade point. But it is difficult to be very disappointed in a film that features so much beauty.

Rome Adventure is not only intrinsically enjoyable but is an excellent illustration of the power of restraint, innuendo, and "naughtiness" in romance films. It was made just before the dam broke and everything was allowed to go in movies. The lovebirds' struggle over whether to end Suzanne Pleshette's virginity has a charm, heat even, that cannot exist amidst the too-much-information sex scenes we see today. Boxed-in attitudes manifested in Rome Adventure make the slightest double entendre unexpected and powerful, even giggly. The kissing is tender and tongueless but very intimate for all that. I have no interest in promoting abstinence in life or in film, but see this picture and then try telling yourself that nothing was lost when big screen freedom came in.

This sudsy, corn-filled romance would have been affectionately known as a 'woman's picture' back in 1962 when it was made. Today we would call it a 'chick-flic'. After giving up the western, (and he made a handful of very good ones), Delmer Daves turned to churning out some very glossy love stories, usually taken from best-selling novels of variable quality and, more often than not, starring the hottest property of the day, Troy Donahue. Donahue was blonde and beautiful and he could even act after a fashion in that kind of stiff American manner that belonged to an altogether different age; perhaps that is why his career was so short-lived.

Here he's an American artist living in Rome and the girl that falls for him was newcomer Suzanne Pleshette who has left American in search of adventure while clinging to her virtue. If for nothing else we should be eternally grateful for any film that gives us Pleshette who was smart, sexy and beautiful beyond her years but whose career never went anywhere either. There is also an older man in the mix as well, a charming Italian played by ... yes, you guessed it, Rossano Brazzi, (were all middle-aged Italian men like Brazzi?), and a bitch played by Angie Dickinson. (Pleshette acts her off the screen). But the real star of the movie is Italy, photographed in all its Technicolor, travelogue glory pushing the story very much into the background. The Italian tourist board should still be paying Daves royalties.