Marcello Girosi Movies

Based on the Ferenc Molnar play Olympia, A Breath of Scandal serves as an elegant vehicle for a ravishing Sophia Loren. The star plays Princess Olympia, who despite her station in life cannot resist the urge to satisfy her sexual appetites. Exiled to the countryside, Olympia falls in love with American millionaire Charlie Foster (John Gavin). Meanwhile, a marriage of state is arranged between the princess and Prince Ruprecht of Prussia (Carlo Hintermann). Jealous rival Countess Lina (Angela Lansbury) endangers this union by threatening to tell all about Olympia and Foster. A cute, continental plot twist brings this harmless confection to a close. Maurice Chevalier dispenses his usual all-knowing glances and sly smiles as Olympia's understanding father. A Breath of Scandal was directed by Michael Curtiz, who uncharacteristically allows the pace to lag at crucial junctures. Scriptwriter Sidney Howard was credited with the script posthumously, some 21 years after his death. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

That Kind of Woman stars Sophia Loren as an Italian girl, Kay, who enjoys a brief wartime romance with American paratrooper Red (Tab Hunter). But Kay is already the property of a suave millionaire (George Sanders) known only as "The Man." When next we see her, Kay is living Hollywood's concept of the life of a kept woman: luxurious apartment, limitless wardrobe, and an ever-so-slightly repentant facial expression. When Red reenters her life, she forsakes her wanton lifestyle -- only to lose her newfound love to enemy bullets. Essentially a remake of the World War I war-horse The Shopworn Angel, That Kind of Woman relies solely on Sophia Loren for its emotional punch; Tab Hunter is, after all, Tab Hunter. Watch for fleeting appearances by John Fiedler as a GI and Bea Arthur as a WAC. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this Italian romantic comedy set in the town of Sorrento, on the beautiful Bay of Naples, a woman rents a home from a dashing womanizer. Unfortunately, after 30 years away, the man returns to become the town police chief and wants to reclaim his home. The woman refuses to leave. The man then attempts to use his many charms. The ploy works and the woman agrees to dump her fiancé and marry him instead. When the womanizer realizes what she is about to do, he jilts her instead and decides to woo his own landlady instead. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

The third entry in the Italian "Bread, Love and. . ." series, Pane, Amore e. . . was directed by Dino Risi, taking over from the auteur of the first two films, Luigi Comencini. Likewise, Sophia Loren substitutes for Gina Lollobrigida, the female star of the earlier films; only Vittorio De Sica returns for the third time. De Sica plays a retired village marshal who returns to his home town of Sorrento, where much against his will he is appointed chief of police. His first job is to evict Sophia Loren, the sexy fish peddler who has been living in his old apartment. By and by, De Sica falls in love with Loren, never realizing (at least until the last reel) that landlady Lea Padovani is the "right" girl for him. In America, Pane, Amore E. . . was released as Scandal in Sorrento. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this sequel to Bread, Love, and Dreams a fortyish man gets himself in trouble with his wife who suspects him of messing around with a sexy woman. Unfortunately, he is innocent. His attempts to prove it form the basis for the story. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Legendary producer David O. Selznick teamed with Italian neorealist Vittorio De Sica (The Bicycle Thief) to bring audiences this heartfelt romantic drama concerning the pain of lost love and the difficulty of saying goodbye. When a beautiful but married American woman, Mary Forbes (Jennifer Jones), meets a handsome Italian, Giovanni Doria (Montgomery Clift), while on holiday in Rome, their forbidden affair soon develops into something more for the lovelorn Giovanni. As Mary bids her heartbroken lover farewell at the train station, Giovanni cannot repress his true feelings and begs her to remain with him in Italy. With a script that credits such writers as Truman Capote, Carson McCullers, Paul Gallico, and Alberto Moravia, Indiscretion of an American Wife has endured to become a true buried treasure of romantic cinema. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Indiscretion of an American Wife began its life as a romantic drama entitled Terminal Station, directed with extraordinary skill and sensitivity by neorealist filmmaker Vittorio De Sica and starring Jennifer Jones and Montgomery Clift as a visiting American housewife and her Italian lover. Their tale was depicted against the backdrop of a hundred other stories and characters that De Sica presented in his 89-minute Terminal Station. In Indiscretion, however -- which was cobbled together at 63 minutes by producer David O. Selznick for the U.S. market -- theirs is the only one. Jones' Mary Hughs wrings her hands and wrestles with her conscience, but with no real depth, while Clift's Giovanni Doria emotes with jealousy and lust as she tries to leave him, gets off one train, waits for another, attempts to soothe the feelings of her confused and disappointed nephew (Richard Beymer), and ponders the idea of leaving her husband and marriage. The two accidentally run afoul of the authorities in the process, and risk exposure of their affair. This was a difficult shoot, beginning with the fact that Jones -- who always required lots of direction to give a consistent performance -- didn't speak Italian and De Sica spoke no English. In addition, the actress reportedly found Clift attractive in ways that reminded her of her first husband, Robert Walker; she also found his method-based approach to acting a challenge which she might have met, if only her husband at the time, Selznick, hadn't been deluging them with script changes on a daily basis. To further complicate matters, at some point after Jones found herself drawn to the Clift, she discovered that he was attracted to men, not women, and she reportedly flew into a destructive rage for the afternoon. Despite these problems, De Sica ended up getting a lot more of what he needed than Selznick did of what he wanted. Unhappy with the Italian director's finished 89-minute film and unwilling to challenge the American censors over some of the content (in connection with the tale of an adulterous wife and mother), Selznick, his editor, and writers (including Ben Hecht) went to work on it and delivered Indiscretion of an American Wife, a Hollywoodization of De Sica's neorealist masterpiece, but which lacked almost all of the most subtle elements of De Sica's movie. At times it seems like another attempt (à la Portrait of Jennie) to celebrate Jones' melodramatic screen persona, while elsewhere it focuses on Clift's tempestuous, exciting screen persona; but otherwise, there's very little "there" there, and the setting and scenes are a mere shadow of what was seen in De Sica's original Terminal Station. In 2003, both films -- and they are two separate movies that just happen to utilize the same footage -- were finally compiled under one cover, and in their optimal states, on a Criterion Collection DVD, and can be seen and compared for what they are. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide