* * * *
Cast: Vivien Leigh, Warren Beatty, Lotte Lenya, Coral Brown, Jill St. John, Jeremy Spenser, Stella Bonhuer, Josephine Brown
Screenplay: Gavin Lambert (Based on the novel by Tennessee Williams)
103 minutes / Color
I’m not sure if the movie kind of pissed me of in a way or if I enjoyed it just a little too much. One thing is clear, the bashing this movie its performances usually receives is really not fair. Leigh was fantastic (as always) but the sad truth about her acting and her movies is that whatever movies she did, it will always be overshadowed by her truly amazing performance as Scarlet O’Hara in “Gone with the Wind” (1939). The film was quite interesting to watch and since I’m 1/4 through the book, I guess I could say that they are very similar, maybe a little too similar though. “The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone” is really what the title indicates it is. It is the story of a rich, retired American theatrical actress who goes to Rome and tries to remain her “drifting” youth by having a very naught affair with a young Italian gigolo. In full explanation:
After the ageing stage actress Mrs. Karen Stone’s (Vivien Leigh) play in New York flops, she and her 20-year-older husband go to Italy for a “vacation”. But on the airplane, Mr. Stone gets a heart attack, leaving the very wealthy Karen alone in a strange city. As she gets adjusted to life there, she notices a strange mysterious young man (Jeremy Spenser) always waiting for her outside, downstairs in the steps in front of her apartment building. This man seems to have an obsession with the old stage beauty and he seems to follow her everywhere and keeps giving her such awful looks, but this man is and always will be a mystery to Karen.
When a broke with the title, Contessa (Lotte Lenya) hears that Mrs. Stone is in town, she hires a handsome and charming young gigolo named Paolo (Warren Beatty) to seduce Mrs. Stone and try to get all the “American dollars”, nice clothes and expensive gifts from her. He and the Contessa make a deal that everything he gets will be split with her 50/50, as long as she introduces him to her.
As Karen and Paolo’s relationship goes up-and-down regarding their many differences in flirtation, social class and “laughter”, the two experience plenty of “beautiful” things together. But Paolo soon discovers that Mrs. Stone is one hard cookie to crack and the Contessa advices him to move to someone younger, a beautiful movie star named Barbra Bingham (Jill St. Louise). Paolo soon goes to Mrs. Stone and insults her about her age and starts an affair with Barbra, leaving Karen unhappy with her age and her life.
In a sad move, Mrs. Stone decides she wants to leave the world, but is gonna frame Paolo for her death. She rips up his picture to make it look like they fought and she lets her stocker in her house, knowing he’s going to kill her.
If your one for surprises, this is the movie for you, but don’t get mad at me when the film leaves you hanging. Though some people enjoy that “hanging” feeling at the end, I was so shattered to not know what happens to Mrs. Stone. They just show her stocker entering her apartment and they show nothing more. It seems like they really wanted us to imply if she’s dead or alive by the end of the night. This, I must say was really clever and that Tennessee Williams makes the simplest tragic stories into something mysterious as well.
Vivien Leigh, the star of the picture, was probably the only truly great performance in the whole movie. In a way, she was playing herself. An aging beautiful movie star who faces harsh realities was Leigh’s life at the moment. Her performance was brave but really oh-so amazing and lively and chilling in the same time. She outshines all her co-stars and should’ve gotten an Oscar nomination.
When is comes to the two supporting players, I really don’t know what to say. Warren Beatty was good-looking, perfect face and charm for the role of Paolo, but he didn’t “bring it” hard enough to be truly recognized. His accent was weak, his “pouting” scenes were annoying and he was clearly just in a “newbie” performance.
But not to worry Warren, nothing could be worst then Lotte Lenya. They call this a Best Supporting Actress nomination? I bet there were probably 50 more capable actresses who could’ve made this role much better. And there were probably 10 more deserving girls that should’ve gotten her spot in the Supporting Actress category. She was dull and annoying and she made her rather big character as something small. I didn’t like one minute of her “alone” screen time. The only time she could be saved was when Vivien Leigh was in the same scene.
The direction of stage director Jose Quintero was perfect for the movie, actually really underrated. The shimmering cinematography and bright colors and lights of Rome were a perfect match to his creative eye. It’s utter madness that the two were completely ignored.
“The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone” is not near a perfect film, many flaws actually (translate my 4/5 starts to 7/10) but it was quite an entertainer. Maybe a newer remake, with someone as brilliant as Leigh, as good-looking as Beatty (but better acting off course) and much, much, much better then Lenya, and then the movie might have the possibility of a 5 star status.
Cast: Vivien Leigh, Warren Beatty, Lotte Lenya, Coral Brown, Jill St. John, Jeremy Spenser, Stella Bonhuer, Josephine Brown
Screenplay: Gavin Lambert (Based on the novel by Tennessee Williams)
103 minutes / Color
I’m not sure if the movie kind of pissed me of in a way or if I enjoyed it just a little too much. One thing is clear, the bashing this movie its performances usually receives is really not fair. Leigh was fantastic (as always) but the sad truth about her acting and her movies is that whatever movies she did, it will always be overshadowed by her truly amazing performance as Scarlet O’Hara in “Gone with the Wind” (1939). The film was quite interesting to watch and since I’m 1/4 through the book, I guess I could say that they are very similar, maybe a little too similar though. “The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone” is really what the title indicates it is. It is the story of a rich, retired American theatrical actress who goes to Rome and tries to remain her “drifting” youth by having a very naught affair with a young Italian gigolo. In full explanation:
After the ageing stage actress Mrs. Karen Stone’s (Vivien Leigh) play in New York flops, she and her 20-year-older husband go to Italy for a “vacation”. But on the airplane, Mr. Stone gets a heart attack, leaving the very wealthy Karen alone in a strange city. As she gets adjusted to life there, she notices a strange mysterious young man (Jeremy Spenser) always waiting for her outside, downstairs in the steps in front of her apartment building. This man seems to have an obsession with the old stage beauty and he seems to follow her everywhere and keeps giving her such awful looks, but this man is and always will be a mystery to Karen.
When a broke with the title, Contessa (Lotte Lenya) hears that Mrs. Stone is in town, she hires a handsome and charming young gigolo named Paolo (Warren Beatty) to seduce Mrs. Stone and try to get all the “American dollars”, nice clothes and expensive gifts from her. He and the Contessa make a deal that everything he gets will be split with her 50/50, as long as she introduces him to her.
As Karen and Paolo’s relationship goes up-and-down regarding their many differences in flirtation, social class and “laughter”, the two experience plenty of “beautiful” things together. But Paolo soon discovers that Mrs. Stone is one hard cookie to crack and the Contessa advices him to move to someone younger, a beautiful movie star named Barbra Bingham (Jill St. Louise). Paolo soon goes to Mrs. Stone and insults her about her age and starts an affair with Barbra, leaving Karen unhappy with her age and her life.
In a sad move, Mrs. Stone decides she wants to leave the world, but is gonna frame Paolo for her death. She rips up his picture to make it look like they fought and she lets her stocker in her house, knowing he’s going to kill her.
If your one for surprises, this is the movie for you, but don’t get mad at me when the film leaves you hanging. Though some people enjoy that “hanging” feeling at the end, I was so shattered to not know what happens to Mrs. Stone. They just show her stocker entering her apartment and they show nothing more. It seems like they really wanted us to imply if she’s dead or alive by the end of the night. This, I must say was really clever and that Tennessee Williams makes the simplest tragic stories into something mysterious as well.
Vivien Leigh, the star of the picture, was probably the only truly great performance in the whole movie. In a way, she was playing herself. An aging beautiful movie star who faces harsh realities was Leigh’s life at the moment. Her performance was brave but really oh-so amazing and lively and chilling in the same time. She outshines all her co-stars and should’ve gotten an Oscar nomination.
When is comes to the two supporting players, I really don’t know what to say. Warren Beatty was good-looking, perfect face and charm for the role of Paolo, but he didn’t “bring it” hard enough to be truly recognized. His accent was weak, his “pouting” scenes were annoying and he was clearly just in a “newbie” performance.
But not to worry Warren, nothing could be worst then Lotte Lenya. They call this a Best Supporting Actress nomination? I bet there were probably 50 more capable actresses who could’ve made this role much better. And there were probably 10 more deserving girls that should’ve gotten her spot in the Supporting Actress category. She was dull and annoying and she made her rather big character as something small. I didn’t like one minute of her “alone” screen time. The only time she could be saved was when Vivien Leigh was in the same scene.
The direction of stage director Jose Quintero was perfect for the movie, actually really underrated. The shimmering cinematography and bright colors and lights of Rome were a perfect match to his creative eye. It’s utter madness that the two were completely ignored.
“The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone” is not near a perfect film, many flaws actually (translate my 4/5 starts to 7/10) but it was quite an entertainer. Maybe a newer remake, with someone as brilliant as Leigh, as good-looking as Beatty (but better acting off course) and much, much, much better then Lenya, and then the movie might have the possibility of a 5 star status.
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6 comments:
About the ending.
Nothing dangling about it. She is definitely dead.
The ending should be interpreted in the context where Paolo tells her that one day in 4-5 years he is gonna pick up a newspaper in which he reads about her death. Like he just read about another middle aged woman who just had got her throat slid at the Rivera by an unknown man in her hotel room.
She initiates such a death
I don't know about that. What do we, the audience really know about stalker guy? He's a bit creepy, quite possibly insane, but is he really out to kill her? The whole movie they keep telling little snippets of how the war ruined their lives, and at the end, just before letting creepy guy in she's being yelled at about it. My thought, far fetched as it may be, is that this creepy stalker could quite possibly be a victim himself of that war with her apartment as the spoils. It was the symbolisim of waving the white flag that did it for me on that score. She could have no way of knowing that, so yes she was also inviting in her demise, but if I can see another path to follow after that then her death isn't necessarily a cut and dry fact, likely as it is to be the case. That's just me though.
"Stocker"? Please.
Also, it could just mean the end of her emotional immaturity.
Tennessee Williams leaves the ending up to the reader (and in the film, director Quintero leaves it up to each audience member). After all, Karen Stone has been dying inside for quite some time. So does it really matter whether the impoverished and filthy young man is Mrs. Stone's angel of death, as it were or a murderer that she invites into her villa to euthanize her? I mean, dig her surname: Stone. Vivien Leigh's title character is a walking tombstone. She is a faded beauty with dead prospects in the acting world; and her husband, whose name she assumed in matrimony, is already deceased by the time the airplane lands in the Eternal City.
Mrs. Stone is a walking ruin. She often wanders aimlessly in a city of ruins that is suffering postwar economic after-effects. No matter how haute-couture she looks and how gorgeous her baby-blue convertible, she is a rotted soul plunked unexpectedly in a foreign country, and as she ambles about Rome, she isn't exactly licking a gelato like Audrey Hepburn's runaway Princess Anne on the arm of Gregory Peck's scheming journalist.
Sure, we can perceive high-art a.k.a. literary metaphors, including that white hankie near the end (or her possible end) or all the blue (as a symbol for drowning, since attaching a large "stone" to a body keeps it from floating). Point is, again, the ending of The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone is whatever you wish it to be.
I leave you with this to ponder: In the film adaptation of Tennessee Williams' play A Streetcar Named Desire, after Brando's Stanley "interferes with" Leigh's Blanche in the guest bedroom and says through gritted teeth to her as she's trying to fight him off, "Tiger, tiger," does he rape her? I believe he does; you may not. The fact that the Code was in force back then (Streetcar the film waa released in 1951: Roman Spring, 1961) meant that rape, other kinds of full-on violence, and consensual sex could only be implied. While we of postmodern times sometimes cry "give me a break," I must say that the benefit of not displaying and stating everything -- and, as it follows, of not s-p-e-l-l-i-n-g everything out -- is: The author, screenwriter(s) and director force us, readers and viewers alike, to think. No matter how well-drawn or -conceived a character, each reader or moviegoer recreates that character in his/her mind and subconsciously creates expectations, motivations and desires for that character. Yes, art is collaborative. This is why we still are critiquing the great Tennessee Williams' works of art more than a half-century later and why long after we all have experienced our Roman springs, other seekers of humanity-through-the-arts will be dissecting his literary legacy.
Sorry about my "waa" typo. I meant "was." And I love this blog of yours!.
I enjoyed the great movie at https://cinemahdv2.net/reviews-movie-on-cinema-hd/
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