SimonJack "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.

movie reviews 50s fluff that did extremely well at the box office and won 2 Oscars... one for cinematography and one for the musical score.3 American secretaries in Rome find the perfect husbands for themselves...Apparently the "favorable exchange rates" allows them to live like Queens. Although there is some truth to this during the early post war years Americans in Europe did very well for themselves.I watched it for views of Rome in the 50s.... as another reviewer notes the interior scenes are all balsa wood sets--that look like Hollywood's idea of Nero's palace. That was a major disappointment but par for the course in 50s Hollywood. Squeezed in between the interior action there are some street scenes with cars and other fun period nostalgia--so it wasn't a total loss.The story isn't worth repeating....a maudlin marriage (the man finds out he has a year to live)....true happiness with working class cartoon Italian and his family singing as they drive through the streets of Rome..and a Cinderella--marriage to a prince--complete the ensemble.It is trite unbelievable but doesn't annoy in any way... I did like the sound track.RECOMMEND

jotix100 Life in post-war Italy is the basis of this colorful Twentieth Century Fox release of 1954. Of course, this had nothing to do with the problems the country was facing at the time, but in many ways, it was a happier time and the living was easy, for at least, the Americans that happen to be in the story. Where were the masters of neo-realism when we needed them? But then again, it would not have been a Hollywood film that could be enjoyed by the movie going public of those years.Three American women come to Rome to work in different venues. There is Frances, the oldest of the trio, who has been in the country the longest. Then there is Anita, a secretary for a United States agency. Maria is the latest arrival. She has come to work in the same place as Anita. The three women enjoy perks that ordinary people would not have. Working for a US agency gave Anita and Maria access to people and places no ordinary citizen could get.Maria falls for a local prince, a sort of serious playboy who loves to live well, loves opera, plays the piccolo, and loves to eat at good restaurants. Anita has humbler expectations with Giorgio, an aspiring lawyer working at the agency as translator. Frances considers herself a spinster; she works for a writer that is well connected, but who has not written a book for quite some time.Jean Negulesco directed the film with an eye toward the beauty of Rome. The opening sequence where one is taken all over to watch the fountains that are one of the main attractions of Rome. The screenplay is just an excuse to show the magnificence of the 'Eternal City' as it looked in those years. John Patrick adapted the novel by John Secondari with an eye for how it would play in Cinemascope.Dorothy McGuire, Jean Peters and Maggie McNamara are seen as Frances, Anita and Maria. Clifton Webb plays the writer. Louis Jourdan is the prince charming and Rossano Brazzi was the stereotypical Latin Lover that he played to perfection during his American film career.Milton Krasner, the cinematographer, had a field day with all the beautiful natural scenery he captured for the viewer's pleasure. He even gets the opportunity to take us to Venice and to the supposedly country place near Rome where Rossano Brazzi's home was located. In reality, the location is from the Dolomite Mountains, a range in Alto Adige, a location that is quite far from the city. Victor Young's music is perfect for the background musical score.Enjoy, and 'buon appetito'

T Y Three Coins in the Fountain is the standard location shoot from the fifties. We get expensive, widescreen photography (Italy - very nice), but the minute we enter an interior (or a character gets in a car) we're in an artificial world of soundstages. This becomes the defacto formula for 50s travelogue/dramas. The movie itself would fall under the heading "chick flick," a term of assignation, for a genre that generally offers only sisterhood beset by minor conflicts; and women either short-changing their own lives and development for a man (the 50s), or defining themselves via quasi-rejecting some social norm (the 80s forward). To be sure, there are chick flicks that can be enjoyed by general audiences (Terms of Endearment) but the term is characteristically used to deservedly dismiss trifling story lines like this one.Three women are explained to be in Italy for various reasons, and become room-mates. As the time demands, they're absurd, but true period types who use the steno-pool to travel, have an income, and find eligible bachelors whom they agree never to compete with; women whose truncated education (and society's glass ceiling) insure that they can't. Additionally, improbably, they live like queens.The movies wide-screen compositions are handsome but the story is off the low end of the scale for inconsequence. The script writers can't be bothered to spare four lines to introduce the piece's major conflict. Here a stenographer is such a dense bimbo that she a) inexplicably reveals a roommates transgressions to her boss, and b) forgets to inform her, causing job loss for her boyfriend and embarrassment for the room-mate. It's just too darned hard for this pretty thing to understand that she's both been outmaneuvered, AND done something very unethical, even within the terms of the movie. The movie notes none of this. The same character has an unexplored conflict in her desire to win a guy, but to also reap benefits (travel, etc.) from delaying or denying the onset of his romantic or sexual interest. The movie is a bewildering gender-power study.