A Place for Lovers [Amanti] (1968, Faye Dunaway, Marcello Mastroianni) – Classic Movie Review 11,603

Director Vittorio De Sica’s superbad 1968 Italian-French romantic film A Place for Lovers [Amanti] is Love Story with an Italian backdrop. It stars stars beautiful people Faye Dunaway and Marcello Mastroianni, and is often judged one of the worst movies ever made. Roger Ebert called it the ‘most godawful piece of pseudo-romantic slop I’ve ever seen!’

Dunaway at her most devastatingly beautiful and Mastroianni at his most sophisticated have this tired, fatal-disease romancer virtually to themselves (certainly there weren’t many people in the audience).

Faye plays Julia, a modish fashion designer from the States dallying with married local Italian engineer and race car driver Valerio (Marcello) in her rented villa in Venice and in front of alpine backdrops. What Marcello doesn’t know is that Faye is dying from that movie fatal disease, where people perish beautifully.

Julia has malignant cancer and goes for a last holiday in Cortina d’Ampezzo, where she meets Valerio and they instantly fall in love. When Valerio finds she is dying, he pretends not to know.

Director De Sica and his cinematographer Pasqualino De Santis make it look as languidly attractive as the stars, but it is an exceedingly poor movie, laughably so. It is unbelievably slushy and superficial.

It is written by Brunello Rondi, Julian Zimet, Peter Baldwin, Ennio De Concini, Tonino Guerra and Cesare Zavattini, based on the play Gli Amanti by Brunello Rondi and Renaldo Cabieri.

The original screenplay credit to Julian Halevy was a blacklist pseudonym for Julian Zimet.

It is made by Compagnia Cinematografica Champion and Les Films Concordia, and was distributed by MGM.

Also in the cast are Caroline Mortimer as Maggie, Enrico Simonetti as party host, Karin Eugh as Griselda, Esmeralda Ruspoli as attorney’s wife, Yvonne Gilbert as Marie, Mirella Pamphili as party guest, David Archell and Martha Buckman.

Ella Fitzgerald provides two songs, the title song ‘A Place for Lovers’ and ‘Lonely Is’.

Vittorio De Sica was acclaimed for neorealist classics Umberto D and Bicycle Thieves.

Julian Zimet died on 9 March 2017, aged 97, in Rome.

Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,603

Link to Derek Winnert’s home page for more reviews: http://derekwinnert.com/