Last of four consecutive Troy Donahue young love pics from producer/ director/writer Delmar Daves*, plainly running out of steam & ideas, goes on vacation in sunny Italy, as narrative yields to travelogue. Rome & Italy never looked so clean & uncrowded! Handsomely shot (though no longer in CinemaScope) by Charles Lawton, it hangs on a thread of a story. No coming-of-age sex? No out-of-wedlock pregnancy? Don’t blame Troy, willing, if more worried about his softening chin line. No, it’s movie newbie Suzanne Pleshette, looking for love & freedom in Italy after quitting a stuffy librarian job, she checks out two possibilities on the ship over: slick, older romancer Rossano Brazzi and tall, socially constipated student Hampton Fancher. Then finds dreamy Troy at her pensione, on the rebound from worldly sophisticate Angie Dickinson. Can Troy toe the line between second & third base to win Pleshette? Compared to the three earlier pics, that’s as far as this one goes.
DOUBLE-BILL/ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Also working all four pics, composer Max Steiner, who never found a Pop equivalent to match the Top-of-the-Charts Love Theme from A SUMMER PLACE/’59, first in the series.
No comments:
Post a Comment