Based on a Tennessee Williams novella, this lovingly filmed but rather (in the end) depressing movie has many points of interest. Vivien Leigh, in her penultimate film role, stars as a famous but aging actress who has given up her career after the death of her rich, protective husband. She settles in a gorgeous flat in Rome and tries to fill her lonely days with whatever she can. A young and rather beautiful gigolo, played by Warren Beatty in only his second film role (and half Leigh's age), is foistered upon her by an impoverished and grotesque aristocratic pimp played, in her first English-speaking film, by the great Lotte Lenya -- some 30 years after starring the The Threepenny Opera.
Leigh is vain enough to try to delude herself that Beatty wants to be with her for her own appeal rather than her money and it is so sad to see a once-great lady give way to her baser instincts as she becomes more and more desperate for Beatty's "love". The viewer, meanwhile, can clearly see that the young man is a vain, nogoodnik only in love with himself. By the end of the film when Beatty has moved on to richer pickings under Lenya's guidance, we are led to believe that Leigh yearns for and arranges her last tragic moments, but the ending is sufficiently open to be taken more than one way.
To prove the rather self-evident point, especially nowadays, that it is not only great movies that get remade -- often to no avail -- but middling ones as well, this title was remade for cable in 2003 with Helen Mirren in the Leigh role, Anne Bancroft substituting for Lenya, and Olivier Martinez as the young stud. At least he didn't have to put on a suspiciously phony accent to play foreign as poor Beatty did -- but I guess he thought he was "stretching" himself at the time and it's only a wee bit distracting.
Guess what? Yes, it's back to the States in a few days' time for what should be the next to last necessary visit this year -- so I shall resume on my return later this month. Take care...
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