Gina Lollobrigida died earlier this year, and TCM was eventually able to do a programming tribute to her after 31 Days of Oscar and the centenary salute to Warner Bros. I recorded several of the movies, with the first one I watched being Come September.
Rock Hudson plays Robert Talbot, a wealthy American businessman. At the start of the movie he's in Milan, one of the big industrial centers of the country, finalizing a deal with an Italian company. It's July, which is significant for the plot because what Talbot is about to do is a break from his usual habit. Talbot was able to buy a villa on the Italian Riviera after the war, and he's had a tradition of spending every September at the villa. However, since he's in Italy on business, he's decided to start his vacation a bit early after finishing up his business.
Talbot isn't spending that month at the villa alone. He's got a sort of Italian girlfriend, Lisa Fellini (Gina Lollobrigida). It's the sort of relationship where, if they spent more than a month out of the year in the same country, they would have already progressed to being engaged if not married. But because Talbot always goes back to the States, Lisa isn't certain whether he's ready for a long-term commitment, so she's accepted a proposal from a British man who's brought his two sisters down from the UK to meet Lisa. So when Lisa finds out that Talbot is back two months early, she isn't certain what to do.
Of course, since we know who the two stars of the movie are, we know Lisa is going to go to Talbot's villa. But she's not going to be the only one. Since Talbot is normally only there one month out of the year, he has a property manager, Maurice Clavell (Walter Slezak) look after the place. And Maurice has been a bit dishonest. Maurice knows that Talbot isn't going to show up until September 1, so he's been running the villa as a seasonal hotel, La Dolce Vista, until mid-August or so in order that he can make a little extra money. And with Talbot on the other side of the ocean, who's going to find out? It's not as if they had AirBnb or Vrbo in 1961, or even any internet for Talbot to find out about Maurice's deception.
But now Talbot is showing up. And Maurice has a group of young women, chaperoned by Margaret Allison (Brenda De Banzie) staying at the place. Talbot is bound to find out, and boy is he going to be ticked. Not only that, but those young women aren't the only ones about to be guests at La Dolce Vista. During his travel down the Italian coast, Talbot kept running into a group of American college men on vacation for the summer and led by Tony (Bobby Darin). Wouldn't you know it, but they have reservations at La Dolce Vista. And Tony is going to meet one of the young women there, Sandy Stevens (Sandra Dee), and fall in love.
Come September is the sort of movie that has an obvious formula to it, and you know exactly where the movie is going to end up in the final reel. But that's what audiences in 1961 wanted. Hudson shows himself once again to be adept at romantic comedy, and Lollobrigida is a suitable (and beautiful) romantic partner for him. Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee would go on to get married in real life. And the movie was shot on location, giving American audiences another thing they would have wanted in the era when traveling to Europe was a lot less common than it is these days.
Sixty years on, the plot of Come September may have worn around the edges, but to criticize a movie for that is a bit unfair. It entertains when a romantic comedy is the sort of movie you're looking for, and it's lovely to look at on multiple levels.
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