Three Coins in the Fountain (1954)

Director:

Jean Negulesco

Writers:

John Patrick (screenplay)
John H. Secondari (novel)

Release Date:

2 June 1954 (USA)

Genre:

Romance | Drama

Tagline:

You've Never Lived Until You've Loved in Rome!

Plot:

American girls dream of finding romance in Rome, but there is none for secretaries, Anita tells her replacement at the USDA...

Plot Keywords:

Fountain | Wish | Beautiful Woman | Venice Italy | Rome Italy

Awards:

Won 2 Oscars. Another 2 nominations

Cast

Clifton Webb	...	John Frederick Shadwell
Dorothy McGuire	...	Miss Frances
Jean Peters	...	Anita Hutchins
Louis Jourdan	...	Prince Dino di Cessi
Maggie McNamara	...	Maria Williams
Rossano Brazzi	...	Georgio Bianchi
Howard St. John	...	Mr. Burgoyne
Kathryn Givney	...	Mrs. Burgoyne
Cathleen Nesbitt	...	La Principessa

Runtime:

102 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English | Italian

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.55 : 1

Sound Mix:

4-Track Stereo (Western Electric Recording) (magnetic prints)

Certification:

Australia:G | Canada:G (video rating) | Finland:S | USA:Approved (PCA #16697, General Audience) | Sweden:Btl | UK:U

Filming Locations:

Dolomite Mountains, Italy

Company:

Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation

Trivia:

The first motion picture filmed in CinemaScope outside of the United States. Prior to beginning principal shooting, 20th Century-Fox studio execs warned producer Sol C. Siegel and director Jean Negulesco that they would have a difficult time with the new film format away from the controlled settings of the studio. Siegel and Negulesco solved this dilemma by simply taking the studio's entire technical crew along to Rome.

Goofs:

Continuity: At the beginning of the final scene at the Trevi fountain, the fountain is dry and being cleaned. While the actors are there, the fountain begins flowing again. However, when the actors leave, the fountain is completely full, not a possibility given the size of the fountain and the period of time over which the scene occurs.

Quotes:

John Frederick Shadwell: Why can't women play the game properly? Everyone knows that in love affairs only the man has the right to lie!

Movie Connections:

Referenced in "Mystery Science Theater 3000: Monster A-Go-Go (#5.21)" (1993)

Soundtrack:

Largo Al Factotum

Fine for sociology, not great for art

Don't look to movies to see how people lived in the past--most are far too glamorous for that--but to find out how they thought, or, rather, what their assumptions were. In this movie Maggie McNamara gets Louis Jourdan to fall in love with her by pretending to like everything he likes--modern art, opera, Roman food and wine, etc. What a wealth of social pathology is here revealed! We are supposed to believe that a man (even a wealthy, cultured, sophisticated man like this one) wants a wife who brings nothing at all to the party, who will never introduce him to anything new he might like, who will never disagree with him, in short is just a clone and a slave. (Didn't anyone ever tell him that a man who wants a mate who is exactly like him really wants...another man? But maybe he knows that, since he's such a pal of Clifton Webb's.) For her part, McNamara is shown as a gold-digger who is excited to have found a rich man who is also handsome and charming. But that's fine because this is what women do, right? This trick was hardly confined to this movie--it was used in other films and TV programmes. With a view of matrimony this bleak it's no wonder that since the following decade people started to give up on the idea of the man as money machine and the woman as doormat.

The view of the arts is depressing, too. McNamara merely parrots Jourdan's or her friend's opinions on art and music. She never tries to learn anything about them on her own, and she finds them hideously boring. Which all good Americans are supposed to, right? All that highbrow stuff is for phonies and foreigners! They had some nice clothes in the Fifties (if you didn't mind wearing a girdle so tight you could hardly breathe), but as for respect for intelligence and culture, forget it. Certainly no one with a tad of aesthetics would have pawned off Clifton Webb's auburn dye job on a helpless audience.