Story Of Three Loves (1953)

On an ocean liner, three different unrelated people recall romances: one tragic, one wistful and one with a happy ending. A ballet impresario (James Mason) reflects on the beautiful ballerina (Moira Shearer) who inspired him one evening. A governess (Leslie Caron) recalls the mysterious stranger (Farley Granger) who romanced her in Rome one night. A trapeze artist (Kirk Douglas) remembers the girl (Pier Angeli) he saved from drowning, only to place her life in a possibly fatal situation. Gottfried Reinhardt (TOWN WITHOUT PITY) directed the Mason and Douglas segments and Vincente Minnelli directed the Caron vignette. All three are quite different in tone which keeps the audience from get bored. The first segment is another variation on THE RED SHOES and it benefits from Shearer's superb dancing. The Minnelli sequence suffers a bit from being a bit coy and the Kirk Douglas sequence is probably the best though it goes on for too long. Being an MGM production in the 1950s, it's very lush and glamorous with art and set direction receiving an Oscar nominations for its eight creators. Music by Miklos Rozsa with a generous dose of Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody On A Theme Of Paganini which John Barry would famously use for his SOMEWHERE IN TIME score. With Ethel Barrymore, Agnes Moorehead, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Ricky Nelson, Robert Horton, Paula Raymond, Richard Anderson, John Lupton, Alix Talton, Kaaren Verne, Celia Lovsky and Steven Geray.