La fontaine des amours

"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.

This is the kind of movie that's most suitable for occasions when you just want something nice to look at, without having to pay much attention and without needing to worry about anything that might jar the senses. It's very picturesque, with many sequences set in interesting and attractive Italian settings. The characters, cast, and story are all innocuous, but they are never especially interesting.

The title sequence is very enjoyable, with the Sinatra song accompanied by many excellent views of Rome. But it sets the expectations a little too high, since the rest of the movie is rather commonplace in all respects other than the settings. The cast is solid, but none of them really get the kind of character that allows them to stand out. The story is pleasant and sometimes enjoyable, but is too often bland, predictable, and/or implausible.

It's still a decent way to pass the time if your expectations aren't too high. It would probably have been a little better if it were a bit shorter, since there is just not enough story material to fill the whole running time without it becoming too noticeable.

Lighten up, boys and girls! You must allow the director to display irony and fun in a feel-good movie in Rome not long after the fall of fascism! And how exotic it must have appeared to most of the world's population who at that time had not travelled abroad.

It does make you wonder how those secretaries could afford those glamorous clothes, and be so close to princes and movers and shakers of post-war Rome. Perhaps a gentle poke at role reversal?

One of the best tunes ever written, wonderful locations, and I don't care a damn about the Trevi fountain behaving inconsistently - that is the nature of fountains, and in Rome they are all drenched in magic!

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.

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.