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The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone is a thoroughly enjoyable novella, a tightly written and executed piece about an actress refusing to acknowledge her age but able to admit that the gig is over. She goes to Rome with her husband to escape from it all, he dies mid-transit, and she ends up staying in Rome and becoming a doomed woman drifting from one meaningless and unfulfilling relationship with one younger man after another. It’s not quite as wonderful as the best of Williams’ stage work, but it still worth seeking out to help provide an overall glimpse into his talents. In the right hands it could have been turned into an impressive movie. These were clearly not the right hands.
One of the main problems with the production is that everything is far too glossy and obviously studio-made. Not one frame of this looks dingy, dirty or old enough to be Rome, the backstage of a theater or anywhere remotely plausible or lived in. It needed the suffocated atmosphere of A Streetcar Named Desire or the claustrophobia and hot house sexual anxiety of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. It needed something that felt real or alive, not this limp dick studio backlot.
Nothing is at stake within this world because everything is so neatly and perfectly placed. Obviously the director and/or screenwriter didn’t know that Williams’ was both darkly, richly funny and an honest portrait of psycho-sexual desires, depression, alcoholism, fear, anxiety and the eternal debate of the old versus the new. It plays everything seriously and offers none of the mordant wit. A scene where Leigh examines her aging face in the mirror should evoke pity, not chuckles for its (almost) high camp values. Her throwing of the key to the Angel of Death that has followed her around Rome throughout the story should have been sadder, more depressing, more disturbing in the way she seems to be giving in to death, surrendering to unhappiness and the inevitability of melancholia in her life. Instead, it’s purple prose and more head-tilting for its mishandling of the situation than anything else.
And while Vivien Leigh delivers a typically strong and on-point performance (was she ever bad?), she is surrounded by a supporting cast that by and large does her no favors. Chief among them is the young Warren Beatty in only his second screen appearance. Beatty is truly atrocious in this film. Not just horrendously miscast – he is far too corn-fed all-American to be a swarthy and deadly Italian lothario – but too faux-bronzed and in possession of one of the most hilariously bad accents in all of film. Each time he speaks his accent will do one of three things: get more ridiculous, stay about the same, or not appear. And the less said about bubble-head ‘actress’ Jill St. John the better. Her line delivery is cringe-worthy, especially her final “Goodnight,” which should have been charged with eroticism and sexual longing but instead sounds like the speak-function on a Mac glitching out. Only Lotte Lenya as the proprietress of the gigolos makes any kind of impression. Her madam is a barracuda who only smiles to reveal that all of her teeth are truly that sharp. She was deservedly rewarded with a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination.
