Another of the movies that's been in the FXM rotation for a few months and I haven't blogged about before is Three Coins in the Fountain. It's got another airing coming up tomorrow (Jan. 2) at 7:45 AM, with another couple of airings next week.
After a nice couple minute's travelogue through Rome with Frank Sinatra singing the title song, we get the opening credits which put Clifton Webb first, although I don't know that his part in the movie is the biggest. That probably belongs to Maggie McNamara, who plays Maria Williams. She's a newcomer to Rome, flying in to take a new job at the US Distribution Agency (I presume handling the Marshall Plan although I don't think this was explicitly mentioned). This is a Rome that's strangely devoid of traffic, as her roomate and co-worker Anita (Jean Peters) is able to park at the train station just by pulling in to the spot, something which happens at several other locations.
Maria and Anita share a ridiculously large villa (the excuse given is that "the exchange rate is in their favor") with Miss Frances (Dorothy McGuire), who has for 15 years been the secretary to expat writer John Shadwell (that's Clifton Webb), who jokes that everybody thinks he's already dead since he hasn't been in America for decades (what he did during the war is left strangely unmentioned). Frances secretly loves Shadwell, and she and Maria throw coins in the Trevi fountain wishing for love. Anita claims she's heading back to the States to get married, so she doesn't.
Anita's claim is actually a lie. On Maria's first day of work, she and Anita are invited by their boss to a cocktail party. Also invited is their co-worker Giorgio (Rossano Brazzi), a translator for the agency. Giorgio and Anita fall in love even though there's a strict policy against fraternization between the female secretaries and the Italian men who work at the agency. Maria sees a lovely prince, Dino (Louis Jourdan), and immediately falls for him, although he doesn't know it at first because really, a prince is going to fall in love with a secretary who isn't his secretary?
So Maria decides she's going to pursue Dino by figuring out what all of his interests are and pretending that she shares the same interests , even though this is a complete lie. But it does eventually work in hooking Dino, at least until she has to admit what she did, threatening the relationship.
Romantic complications also happen for the other two pairings. Anita and Giorgio go up to meet his family in South Tirol, before Maria makes comments to her and Anita's boss about Anita's relationship that get Giorgio fired. This also is going to make it more difficult for Giorgio to fulfill his dream of becoming a lawyer.
As for Frances and Shadwell, he finally makes some comments that can be seen as a marriage proposal, which is of course what Frances has always wanted. But that very same day, Shadwell goes to his doctor and discovers he's got a tumor that's going to kill him. So he breaks off the engagement and plans for his death, absolutely pissing off Frances.
Of course, you can make an educatied guess that these relationships are going to wind up with a relatively happy ending, considering the sort of movie Three Coins in the Fountain is. It's undemanding fluff, which was made more to showcase Rome and how beautiful the place was than to tax the viewers. (The movie was made on location, which would have been exotic for audiences of 1954 when transatlantic travel was not something engaged in by people of average wealth unless you were drafted to go off and fight an overseas war.) As such, the story won't be for everybody, but the color photography looks a damn sight better than all those Traveltalks shorts that are badly in need of a restoration.
Just don't mention the plot holes, because God knows there are a lot of them, some of which I've already mentioned. Go with the flow and let all of those lovely images of Rome flow over you, and you'll probably like the movie. It is available on DVD is you miss the FXM showings before it goes back in the vault.
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