Mimo Billi Movies

Gidget Goes to Rome was the third film to be inspired by the beach-happy characters created by Frederick Kohner back in the mid-1950s. This time, surfer gal Francie "Gidget" Lawrence is played by newcomer Cindy Carol. Per the title, the film finds Gidget vacationing in the Eternal City with faithful boyfriend Jeff, aka Moondoggie (James Darren). Chaperoning the pair is Aunt Albertina (Jessie Royce Landis), but that doesn't stop Gidge and Jeff from experiencing brief extracurricular flirtations in Rome. The question: how do the producers get Cindy Carol into a bikini without diverting from the plotline? The answer: a slapstick setpiece during a fashion show. The last of the theatrical Gidget features, Gidget Goes to Rome was followed by a handful of TV-movie sequels and two separate weekly sitcoms. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Irving Rapper's film is a dramatization of the Old Testament tale of Joseph, who ascends from slavery to the position of minister in the court of the pharaoh. ~ Jason Ankeny, Rovi

Marlene Dietrich and Vittorio De Sica grace this comical yet dramatic Italian tale of a tumultuous love affair between two compulsive gamblers who meet in Monte Carlo. Though both are down on their luck, they dress affluently and that is what attracts them to each other. Romantic sparks fly until they learn the truth about each other. This leads Dietrich to begin an affair with a rich American widower. His teenage daughter falls for De Sica but he feels himself too old for her and rejects her. Eventually Dietrich and the American decide to marry, but before the wedding takes place, De Sica has a major winning streak. But being an addict, he does not know when to stop and begins losing again. Fortunately, his valet intervenes by knocking him unconscious. Later, when he awakens, De Sica vows that he will never gamble again and prepares to go home to his native Naples. When Dietrich learns this she is distraught and realizing she cannot marry the Yankee, tells him the truth about her feelings for De Sica thereby freeing herself to follow him. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Perhaps because its American distribution was brief, Le Printemps, L'Autumne et L'Amour is one of the lesser-known Fernandel vehicles. The lantern-jawed comedian plays a confirmed middle-aged bachelor, whose life is radically altered when he rescues 18-year-old Nicole Berger from drowning. Out of gratitude, the girl marries Fernandel, but predictably the union is far from satisfactory. Complications arise when Berger falls in love with Phillipe Nicaud, a boy closer to her own age. If one must have a May-December drama, better one with Fernandel than those overheated Hugo Haas-Cleo Moore extravaganzas. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The White Sheik (Lo Sceicco Bianco), Fellini's first solo flight as director, is a gentle lampoon of the idolatry heaped upon movie stars. An impressionable young bride, Wanda (Brunella Bovo) accompanies her husband Ivan (Leopoldo Trieste) on a dull honeymoon, full of meetings with family members and the papal father. Bovo fantasizes over matinee idol Fernando Rivoli, AKA The White Sheik (Alberto Sordi), the hero of a photo strip comic. She repeatedly drifts away from her husband and back, in periodic attempts to find The Sheik, ultimately repairing to the location site where Sordi's latest film, The White Shiek, is in production. Her inevitable disillusionment with the vainglorious Sordi is intercut with her husband's comic (and desperate) attempts to explain his wife's absences at family gatherings to his disgruntled relatives. After a comically inept suicide attempt, Bovo and Trieste are reunited. Featured in the cast is Fellini's wife Giuletta Masina as a prostitute named Cabiria, who'd be given a vehicle of her own, Nights of Cabiria, in 1955. Based on "an idea" by Michelangelo Antonioni, The White Sheik was the main inspiration for Gene Wilder's The World's Greatest Lover (1977). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi