As a young American girl growing addicted to classic films, I couldn't help viewing Europe as some sort of vast land of eternal magic, romantic possibility, and architectural wonder. The classic fairytales -- like Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Thumbelina, the Little Mermaid, Rumpelstiltskin, and Hansel & Gretel -- were all steeped in the European tradition. The adventures of Robin Hood, the Three Musketeers, The Prince & the Pauper, King Arthur, Pinocchio -- these stories came from England, France and Italy. To me, Europe was a Disneyfied fairyland, full of castles and moats, princesses and princes who rescued and adored them, deep forests full of witches and wizards, elves and knights. As I got older, that impression of Europe (the great and destructive colonizer that is is) has definitely matured, but I still love the magic of these movies.
As escapism, Hollywood's portrayal of The Old World is ideal. It's still the place of royalty and romance, judging by the heightened fantasies and technicolor adventures presented in the studio films of the 1950s. Many of these screen gems were targeted to women, and though I'm of another generation and another race, I was not immune. For instance, I feel like I've already seen most of what Rome has to offer in the way of historic sights, thanks to so many of these European travelogue stories.
Here are a couple of Americans In Italy tales from the Golden Age of Hollywood.
1. Rome Adventure from 1962 features fresh faced Suzanne Pleshette as Prudence Bell, a young American who is forced from her job as a librarian at an exclusive girls school because of her freethinking ways. Seems she has kept a banned novel about young love on the shelves, skirting the parameters of what the school board feels is 1950s decency for young ladies. So Prudence travels to Italy to experience life for herself, and immediately meets another young American graduate student staying at the same pensione, preppy dreamboat Don Porter (Troy Donahue). The two are quickly drawn to each other, and so begins a clandestine courtship conducted against a backdrop of gorgeous Italian vistas: curbside cafes, jazz clubs deep inside caverns (where New Orleans trumpeter Al Hirt holds sway), rustic village farmers markets, and alpine lakeside chalets.
Prudence is ripe to go all the way with Don -- something we take for granted today but in the 60s was a somewhat controversial move for a "nice" girl -- then discovers that he hasn't quite shaken his previous girlfriend, a needy, manipulative glamorpuss played by Angie Dickinson. Heartbroken, confused, and not wanting to miss her opportunity to become a "real woman" abroad, Prudence offers herself up to Roberto, the suave older Italian man (Rossano Brazzi) who tried to romance her when she first arrived. But wise Roberto knows true love when he sees it, and quickly reunites her with Don for a happy ending.
Rome Adventure is as much about the beauty, history, architecture and customs of Italy as it is about love, and these attributes are also stressed in a previous fluffy international screen romp.
2. Three Coins in the Fountain, from 1954, also features the eternal suave Italian, Rossano Brazzi. In this story, three American women share a flat in Rome for work and find love along the way. Dorothy McGuire pines after the eminent but reclusive American novelist she works for as a secretary; Jean Peters, who has a fiance waiting for her Stateside, agrees to a jaunt into the countryside with coworker Brazzi and soon finds herself falling for him; and spunky young Maggie McNamaraa, newly arrived, hatches a scheme to nail down a notorious Italian playboy prince (French charmer Louis Jourdan).
The plot is classic boilerplate (Where The Boys Are, How To Marry A Millionaire), but oh, the Trevi Fountain, the public monuments and sculptures, the Spanish Steps, the Colosseum, the pensiones, museums, and outdoor cafes! The colors, flavors, landcapes and vibrancy of post-war Rome are hard to resist, photographed in Technicolor. (Roman Holiday from 1952, starring Audrey Hepburn as an incognito princess and Gregory Peck as an American newspaperman, also showed all of the charms of Rome -- but in black and white.)
Italy is also shown to advantage in a pair of films that are slightly less sunshine and lollipops, and focus more on the romantic hopes and dreams of women in middle age.
3. A Light in the Piazza (1964) is a beautifully photographed bittersweet tale about Meg Johnson (Olivia de Havilland), a woman on holiday in Italy with her 26-year-old daughter Clara, played by blonde bombshell Yvette Mimieux. Clara is beautiful and vivacious, but has the mental capacity of a 10-year-old after being kicked in the head by a horse at that age. Clara's condition has driven a wedge between Meg and her tobacco executive husband Noel, who wants Clara put into a "special place" so that they can get their marriage on track. On their excursions around town, Clara draws the attention of a young Italian, Fabrizio (played by a young George Hamilton); though Meg tries to thwart the courtship, Fabrizio is persistent and soon Clara is obsessed with him. The two seem to truly understand and care for each other, to Meg's surprise. Fabrizio insists that the Johnson women meet his family, who greet them with open arms and see Clara's innocence as refreshing. Meg never tells the Naccarellis, who are clearly hoping for a wedding, about her daughter's condition.
Now Meg is faced with some major decisions. Can her daughter, whom she loves so much, be truly happy and successful as Fabrizio's wife? Should she defy and deceive Noel, who has no idea how serious the romance has become, by marrying her off without his knowledge? And, with Fabrizio's handsome father (Rossano Brazzi, naturally) making casual Continental overtures to her, Meg ponders her own life as a woman, a wife, and a good mother. De Havilland is marvelous, her big brown eyes reflecting every competing emotion and her sense that Italy itself is influencing her; its beautiful and seductive environment create love, desire, and a sense of drifting along (something also noted about Italy by characters in each of these films). As Clara, in bridal white, leaves the Italian church arm in arm with her groom, Meg assures herself: "I did the right thing."
4. The enchantments of Rome can also become a siren song that lead some to dash themselves on the rocks. So it seems in The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1961); an adaptation of a Tennessee Williams story, it can't help but be tragic.
Karen falls for him, shelling out money at every turn even as she knows what he is; Leigh is expert at displaying her character's confusion, desperation, and self-loathing as she falls deeper into Paolo's insidious trap. She has become a ribald joke without a shred of self-respect or dignity left. Leigh is in nearly every scene; the gorgeousness of her costumes and the Italian settings only serve to highlight the heartrending narrative and frightening denouement.
For a more contemporary take on the transformative, seductive powers of Italy, check out director Bernardo Bertolucci's 1996's Stealing Beauty, as 19-year-old Liv Tyler comes to an artist colony in the Tuscan countryside to pose for a painting, and embarks on secret missions to both lose her virginity and find the identity of the father who seduced her now-deceased mother there. Or check out the far more recent Under the Tuscan Sun from 2003, when the charms of Italy lead newly divorced American Diane Lane to leap out of a tour bus to buy and restore an aging Italian villa.
And as recently as this year, a TV reality show titled "To Rome For Love" highlighted a group of black women who travel to Italy to find love with mixed results. Yes, Italy has a tight hold on our imaginations.
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