Love in Rome (1960) DVD-R

Starring Mylène Demongeot, Elsa Martinelli, Peter Baldwin, Claudio Gora, Maria Perschy
Directed by Dino Risi

Print: Black and White
Runtime:107 min.
Genre: Drama

The plot of this little-known but very well-made romantic drama (from the generic title, one could well mistake it for just another example of teen-oriented fluff which proliferated in Italy at this time!) anticipates high-profile works by acclaimed film-makers such as Joseph Losey’s EVA (1962) and John Schlesinger’s Oscar-winning DARLING (1965). Here, the femme fatale-ish heroine (who can’t bring herself to remain faithful to her true love for very long) is played by luscious French starlet Mylene Demongeot – in what is probably her most significant role; the hero by American Peter Baldwin, whom I best recall from THE GHOST (1963) – one of the better examples of Italian Gothic Horror. As with the afore-mentioned EVA, the heroine has set her sights on a movie career: however, she only seems to be able to secure parts in low-brow peplums (of which Demongeot herself made a few!)…and, amusingly, one of the country’s foremost film-makers – Vittorio De Sica – turns up in a cameo as the flustered director of one of them!! Still, the real protagonist here is Baldwin – who, being an essayist, is made to provide first-person commentary to smooth over occasional gaps in the narrative (the events occur over a number of months at least); in fact, he’s himself involved with two other women during the course of the film – Elsa Martinelli (the film even begins with the two having a row at night in Rome’s famed Piazza di Spagna) and Maria Perschy (who happens to be the intelligent but virtuous daughter of a friend of Baldwin’s father, a lecher who numbers Demongeot among his flings!). Though given obviously subsidiary roles, both Martinelli and Perschy play flesh-and-blood characters rather than mere stereotypes (frustrated with Demongeot’s capricious nature, at one point the hero proposes to upper-class Perschy but is unable to follow it through); the cast also includes Claudio Gora (appearing as Perschy’s father) and, as two of the heroine’s copious conquests, Jacques Sernas and Umberto Orsini.