The Battle of the Villa Fiorita

I saw this movie as a teenager when it came out. Typical of its time and genre. Two kids go alone across Europe to bring their mom, who has left dad for new man, back to dad. Great scenery. O K young teenager travel adventure fantasy. O'Hara and Brazzi OK but film stolen by kids. A young Olivia Hussey prior to her starting in Romeo and Juliet. The result of their attempt is in keeping with the morals of its time.

Maureen O'Hara has a perfect husband (Richard Todd) and two lovely children, a boy and a girl, in a splendid estate outside London, when she falls in love with an Italian (Rossano Brazzi) and decides to leave her family with him. He brings her to his fabulous estate by the Lago di Garda in Italy (with Gabriele d'Annunzio's working place in sight), where they lead a luxurious life in splendour, until we learn that he also has a child, a daughter (Olivia Hussey in her first part), whom he brings to the villa, shortly after Maureen O'Hara's two children have come there on their own, on a special mission to fetch her back to their father in England, entirely on their own initiative - we never learn that Richard Todd was ever informed about it. Now, what is wrong in all this? That's what the battle of the Villa Fiorita is about, the children fighting hard to separate their parents from their lovers, and they will go to any length. This provides the drama of the film, which actually reaches rather critical heights. Rossano Brazzi, this great invincible lover and he-man, has to finally admit, that the children (especially Maureen's very determined daughter) won the moment they showed up at his house. The film is beautifully made, with gorgeous music all the way by Mischa Spoliansky (Rossano plays a successful composer and pianist, and it's Spoliansky's music he is playing,) with splendid colours and cinematography, but the interesting part is the acting of the children. They take charge of the film and their parents and lead them right, in spite of their almost equally determined resistance. It's a great film and story for child psychology, and as all true and good parents know, children always know better.

Delmer Daves created some of the great lush romantic dramas of my youth such as A Summer Place, Parrish and Rome Adventure all starring Troy Donahue, and then also at WB directed Spencer's Mountain starring Henry Fonda and Maureen O Hara. Daves then cast the beautiful Maureen in this film shot in Italy. In her book 'Tis Herself Ms. O Hara said she was simply aghast when seeing the rushes she noted that her face was shot with shadows. At first I did not believe a major star would be photographed against her wishes and that the veteran renowned cinematographer Oswald Morris held a grudge against the lovely star because of a football bet! Whether this is true or not, the fact is that La O Hara one of the cinema's great beauties has some scenes that back up her complaint.

I thought the film was fine and the casting of Ms. O Hara with Rosonna Brazzi who was in Daves' Rome Adventure as well- also very fine. The location shot were gorgeous.

Maureen O'Hara and Rossano Brazzi are glowing middle-agers in love whose romance is thwarted by their respective pre-teen children: his haughty Italian daughter and her stubborn, bratty British boy and girl. Stories of kids meddling in their parents' love lives are usually successful if played as comedy; here, the melodrama gets to be too much, with the adults continually exasperated and the kids unlikably victorious in their immature pranks. The familial arguments which arise are probably realistic, but here they dissipate interest in the movie, particularly since the love affair between the grown-ups is much more interesting than the finger-pointing. ** from ****

While this should have been a rousing success given the stars (Richard Todd none other in a support role) it is lamed by a hopeless script in which a selfish woman (O'Hara) runs off to have an affair pursued by her pretty awful kids. The lover has a daughter (Hussey) who for some reason joins in the plot to separate the lovers and falls in love with the boy. The whole thing is unpleasant and it is difficult to know who is worse, the kids or the adults, so when Hussey gets a (well deserved) spanking from her father you just want to boot his backside to wake him up to his own responsibilities. All together a complete waste of time.