Raw Wind in Eden

This is a meandering, rather oddball film which hopefully gave its stars a nice vacation in Italy (at a time when production was booming there), but did nothing for their careers. Esther plays a successful model working in Rome, but involved with a wealthy American tycoon back home. He sends word to her via his sleazy European partner and friend Carlos Thompson that his wife will not give him a divorce to marry her. Dejected Esther immediately agrees to go with Thompson on a yachting party thrown by another millionaire off Majorca. Thompson, however, crashes his private plane carrying them in a storm onto a tiny island near Sardinia.

This island is populated only by Eduardo de Filippo, his nubile and soon-to-be of age daughter Rosanna Podesta, and Jeff Chandler, a mysterious beachcomber who is betrothed to Podesta and helps out de Filippo. Rik Battaglia plays a date farmer from the mainland who is Chandler's rival for Podesta's affections. The rest of the film, which keeps a fairly light tone while throwing in bits of melodrama and a badly done attempt at action at the end, involves Williams' and Thompson's efforts to get off of the island while unraveling the mystery of who Chandler is and what he is doing there.

The only real interest the film has is the pretty Mediterranean scenery and the only teaming of Williams and Chandler, who were engaged for a time. Williams later did her best to posthumously trash Chandler's reputation in her autobiography by describing him as a cross-dresser! Not a very gallant thing for her to do, but whether or not it was true at least it might have livened things up a bit if Jeff had modeled some of Esther's frocks in this pointless exercise.