Indiscretion of an American Wife (1953)

As Good As It Gets

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

This is really a brief encounter in every sense of the word. The film is just 64 minutes long and recounts an older, almost frumpy looking Jennifer Jones attempting to break off a romance with an Italian played by Montgomery Clift. Clift just will not say no causing Jones to miss her train and the film is devoted to their adventures before the next train comes.Clift gave her quite a slap when she says she must go. Note a young child, Dickie Beymer, who later made a career for himself as Richard.To depict kindness, Jones helps out a couple with three children, expecting a 4th, when the woman becomes ill at the station. There is mention of Jones's husband and 7 year old daughter in Philadelphia.Arrested for kissing? That's exactly what happens and luckily for both, an understanding magistrate prevents them from being hauled off to court. Perhaps, the film would have been better had this been a comedy. The dramatic overtones really don't work given the confines of time.

Even with one third missing presumably butchered this is still a fine film. I've never been particularly enamoured of Jennifer Jones, finding her a tad sultry from my taste but I have to confess that here I can find little fault with her and she almost equals Monty Clift in both acting skill and intensity. There is enough evidence both from the photography, set-ups, imagery and even the way De Sica fills the frame with other people, some recurring, others just passing, to regret what might have been although on the other hand what we have is pretty tasty and on the whole is illustrative of what can be done with a run-of-the-mill story of doomed love when you have people of this calibre involved. Very well worth seeking out.

***SPOILERS*** Despite its short duration on screen, 64 minutes, the movie "Indescretions of an American Wife" is almost as torturous to sit through and digest as a six course Thanksgivng dinner including seconds! It's in fact the fine acting of it's two leading actors Montgomery Cliff and Jennifer Jones as half Italian and half American University of Pisa professor Giovanni Doria and bored and lonely Philadelphia housewife Mary Forbes that save the film from total destruction. Originally titled "Terminal Station" still both Cliff & Jones which sounds like the name of a Wall Street law firm or San Francisco detective agency almost had their fine acting careers terminated in being in the movie.What really sunk the movie was the behind the scenes quibbling between the films Italian director Vittorio De Sica's and American and Hollywood producer David O. Selznick who was married to Miss Jones at the time. It was the always having it his way, and getting it, Selznick who by wanting more out of De Sica's efforts in the film who ended up butchering the movie. It was those deranged efforts on Selznick's part that ended up cutting out all the good parts in the film shrinking the 89 minute, which is now available on DVD, soap opera by almost a third to just over an hours time!The movie itself has to do with American Mary Forbes who's about to leave for Paris at the spacious Rome Terminal Station who then runs into her Italian and half American lover Giovanni Doria. Giovanni who after a month long hot and heavy love affair with Mary is heart-broken to see her go without as much as telling him she's leaving. Mary went to Rome to visit her sister and after meeting the handsome Giovannie fell madly in love with him and promised to never ever leave him. You can imagine the shock that Giovanni felt when he saw his beloved Mary leaving him for good without as much as say goodbye but only sending him a dear John or in his case Dear Giovanni letter in the mail.The dark and gloomy look to the movie is the fact that director De Sica decided to shoot the entire film not only inside a train station but, because the real time duration of the film is about three hours, at night! It was because of that on De Sica's part that made the film watchable and entertaining. It's the critical time element in Mary waiting for the train to come and pick her up that was keeping her and the audience on pins and needles all throughout the movie. In spite of the ridiculous part, as an Italan lover, he had in the movie Montgomery Cliff came across very convincing and the ending when he's falls and almost gets himself killed running after the train carrying Mary almost brought tears to my eyes.As for Jennifer Jones as Mary Forbes she was, at age 33, as beautiful as I've ever seen her in a movie and was lucky enough to be called upon by director De Sica to show mostly emotions not read her corny lines, which for the most part were idiotic, which really showed what a great actress she really was. Jennifer Jones came across like a grown up and far more mature Judy Garland in a similar film that Judy was in at age 22 was back in 1945 called "The Clock". In that film Judy's co-star being of all people Jnnifer's husband at the time Robert Walker! As for what turned out to be the real star of the movie Rome's Terminal Station, or in Italian Stazione Terminl, it was one of the late Italian Dictator's Benito Mossolini's biggest projects in trying to modernize but never finishing it, he was thrown out of power before he could, which coined the phrase attributed to him in having the trains come on time.

This film is full of ironical metaphors. We have a running Joseph and Mary / Adam and Eve biblical subtext. The surface sentimentality can be misleading. Rome Termini Station contains enough iconography of Heaven and Hell to make up an ironic parable. I'm surprised that so many critics have not picked up the clever gags. I suspect that the butchering of the film down to 63 minutes has something to do with it. The serpent and the apple, seeking refuge in the manger, Dante's innocent descending into the purgatory of the police station, two passionate innocents caught up in orthodox role structure, it's all there, if rather clumsily re-edited. The film clearly belongs to an era where film language a la Welles or Hitchcock was more sophisticated than much of today's mainstream cinema.