Metro On Euro Tour

Italo Setting For Light In The Piazza (1962)

Olivia DeHavilland marries off brain-damaged daughter Yvette Mimieux to a rich Italian family during Euro tour. Obviously a one-and-only of its kind, this was also a last lush vehicle for DeHavilland, who looks plenty good at forty-six, even if I'd have gone other directions with some of hair and wardrobe. Arthur Freed produced for MGM and Guy Green directed. You'd almost swear Vincente Minnelli was mixed in somewhere, being this seems his kind of project, and maybe he was induced at some point, but turned the property down. As is, the story is a grabber. I was enough intrigued in December 1965 to watch Light In The Piazza past bedtime on NBC's Tuesday Night At The Movies.

Here's the gag: Yvette was kicked by a horse when she was ten and recovers, but with forever-after maturity level of a kid. But she's still Yvette Mimieux, and so guileless George Hamilton comes sniffing, which puts DeHavilland on prod. His dad Rossano Brazzi (did it always have to be Rossano Brazzi?) lays Continental charm  on Olivia and he's way more appealing than cold heart of a husband/father Barry Sullivan, who jets in briefly from the family home in Winston-Salem, NC (!!). Guess he flew out of NYC, as neither Greensboro nor Charlotte go direct to Florence, Italy, even today. Piazza was location shot, way more of it lensed outdoors than travel folders 20th Fox circulated in the 50's to celebrate Cinemascope.

Sub Rod Taylor For George Hamilton Here and It Would Look Exactly Like a
Scene From The Time Machine of Two Years Earlier

The picture is not a little dishonest, Mimieux supposedly of child mentality but comporting herself like breath-of-spring ingénue any guy might mistake for normal (or not care otherwise). Imagine her Weena from The Time Machine brought to present-day, and that's near the characterization we get here. Light In The Piazza has suspense for whether Olivia will pull off her marital scheme, and yes, the wrap sort of surprised me, message implicit that Italy is where Yanks go to unload broken toys. After all, don't earthy Euros like their women best at ten-year-old level? (Olivia says as much at the fade) DeHavilland is her customary excellent. A pity there was too little worthwhile work after this. With botoxed mummies perfing into their sixties today, you'd think OdeH could thrive given later birth date. For that matter, at age 97, this actress institution still looks better than a lot of what's out there hustling leads.