Three Coins In The Fountain (1954)

Three American secretaries share a luxury apartment in Rome. Each falls in love but there are complications to overcome. The oldest (Dorothy McGuire) of the three is in love with her boss (Clifton Webb) of 15 years but he doesn't know it. The middle one (Jean Peters) falls in love with an impoverished law student (Rossano Brazzi) while the youngest (Maggie McNamara, THE MOON IS BLUE) sets her cap for a playboy Prince (Louis Jourdan). The CinemaScope process was still relatively new in 1954 and 20th Century Fox boasted that THREE COINS IN THE FOUNTAIN was the first film in the process to be shot in Rome. The film works as a travelogue as Milton Krasner's Oscar winning cinematography explores Rome's sights as well as Venice and the hit Oscar winning title song (sung by Frank Sinatra at the start of the film) also helped lure moviegoers into making it a box office hit. As for the film itself, it's a glossy romantic melodramatic fantasy of finding love in an exotic locale and if you're in the mood for it, as romantic now as it was then. Directed by Jean Negulesco, Fox's go to man for this sort of thing (he directed Fox's THE BEST OF EVERYTHING and WOMAN'S WORLD too). With Cathleen Nesbitt, Howard St. John, Kathryn Givney and in her American film debut, Luciana Paluzzi as Brazzi's sister.