A bit by chance, I've happened to watch pairs of movies recently that have something in common with each other: two with Cleavon Little in the cast; two with Lauren Hutton; and a pair of sports movies come to mind. And then I happened to watch a pair of movies based on works by Tennessee Williams in which Italians play a key part, not realizing until I started watching the second that Tennessee Williams was responsible for both. The first one I watched was The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, although it's the later of the two movies. In the near future, depending on the order in which I decide to put up the blog posts on the various movies I've watched recently, you'll get the other movie, The Rose Tattoo.
Mrs. Karen Stone is played by Vivien Leigh. She's a stage actress who does Shakespearean stuff, but she's getting up there in years and still seems to insist on playing the roles written for younger women. The public and the critics are noticing it, so Karen decides a break would be in order. Besides, she's got a wealthy industrialist husband who has health issues, and some time off from his equally stressful job would be just the thing for the two of them. With that in mind, they decide to go to Rome for a break, since it's such a romantic city.
Unfortunately for the two of them, Mr. Stone suffers a heart attack mid-flight, and even if they had been over land and been able to divert, it wouldn't have been any health as the heart attack kills him almost instantly. Mrs. Stone is now a widow, but one who's inherited a substantial sum of money from her husband, meaning that she can take a break from going back to work instead of having to flog Pepsi like Joan Crawford. Mrs. Stone takes an apartment overlooking the Spanish Steps, which are apparently considered romantic by tourists and ex-pats. We can also see that there's some shady young man at the bottom of the steps who keeps looking up at Mrs. Stone's apartment.
Meanwhile, there are a lot of other younger men out there who are perfectly willing to debase themselves for an older lady's fortune much the way that sugar babies do with older men. Paolo di Leo (Warren Beatty) is one of those men, and he works for the Contessa (Lotte Lenya), who is basically a pimp although they don't use such language thanks to the presence of the Production Code. If anything, it's presented as being more like Gigi only with the sex of the two protagonists switched. The Contessa arranges for Paolo and Mrs. Stone to meet.
Mrs. Stone is happy to have companionship at first, although the relationship slowly turns into love, at least from her perspective. For Paolo it's just a job, and when he meets Barbara (Jill St. John), an American actress closer to his age, he starts pursuing her. The doesn't happen until about the final quarter of the movie, however, after a long, slow build-up between Stone and Paolo.
And when I say long and slow, it really is long and slow. That's one of the two big weaknesses of the film, the other being Warren Beatty, who isn't Italian at all. On the more surprising front, and for me a bit of a plus, is that the characters aren't anywhere near as obnoxiously shouty and over the top as they are in some of Tennessee Williams' other works that are set in the southern US.
The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone is definitely the sort of movie where I can see why it would appeal to other people more than it did to me, so it's another one where I would strongly suggest watching for yourself and making your own conclusions.
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