lasttimeisaw Italian maestro Vittorio De Sica's Hollywood sortie, this ill-received co-production with David O. Selznick, starring Ms. Selznick, Jennifer Jones and Montgomery Clift as the star-crossed lovers, is built on a pellucid idea of condensing a doomed extramarital romance within a neat spatio- temporal structure: two hours inside the Terminal train station in Rome. Jones plays Mary Forbes, the titular American wife, who strikes up a torrid affair with a bachelor Giovanni Doria (Clift, sporting a passable Italian and stays on autopilot as a careworn and distressed jilted lover) during her visit in Rome, impulsively decides to go back home and break off their liaison after declaring her utmost feelings for him the day before. Firstly, she must take the train from Rome to Paris, and Giovanni's timely advent botches Mary's plan to leave at 7 pm, and the next train leaves in one and half hour, during which time, the pair undergo an honest tête-à- tête, a badly-devised game-changer (encountering Mary's nephew Paul, a decent screen debut of Richard Beymer), a temporary separation then rekindle their passion in an empty compartment, which will cause a scene and their fate will be left at the mercy of the police commissioner (Cervi), can she manage to take the 20:30 train and how their affair will end? First of all, the premise is very lax, there is absolutely no exigency for Mary to depart for Paris immediately, it is her whim out of the blue, which makes the entire scenario sound contrived, it is not helped by Jones' emotionally duelling but ultimately mushy incarnation, as demure and kind- hearted as her Mary is, clearly, it is her have the final say, but her conflict with moral compass swivels when the narrative is constantly hogtied by its essayist sidebar to extol the Termini station itself, a monumental presence buzzed with characters and egregious red tape, which feels tonally incompatible with the central story, which shows up the quintessential rift between Hollywood melodrama and Italian Neo-realism. Lastly, if you are not dissuaded by this review and still want to watch it, don't watch the bluntly truncated 63-minute USA version, its 89-minute original version is unequivocally more cohesive and engaging for the viewing experience, still, it is a letdown among De Sica's corpus.

sol1218 ***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.

kenjha A married American woman has an affair with an Italian man while visiting her sister in Rome. This short film (a longer director's cut now exists) focuses on the last few hours spent at a train station as the woman is returning home. De Sica creates some striking imagery but the script is too slight to let the characters or the plot develop. Apparently producer Selznick cut the film to stress the romance and to make Jones (his wife then) look good. Clift plays a brooding, hot-blooded Italian but isn't given much to do. Both Jones and Clift have quirky mannerisms that seem well suited to the roles of the angst-ridden lovers. An interesting curiosity piece.

walther_von_wartburg This film will not appeal to everyone, but even with the ravages executed by Selznick on the American cut, Stazione Termini (Selznick's U.S. version: Indiscretion of an American Housewife) remains a powerful film for those who can appreciate it.To be sure, there are faults, especially unfortunate in light of De Sica's credentials. Most striking are that Montgomery Clift as American-Italian is a spectacular error, not so much in casting, as in characterization (American expat would have worked); far too much English comes from the mouths of early-1950s Romans and other Italians; and the American housewife is perhaps overly oblivious to the italianità around her. Otherwise, mostly spot on, at least in the full version.Jennifer Jones, beyond radiant in her prime-of-life womanhood, exudes a sensuality that both contrasts strikingly with her 1950s-prim exterior and celebrates the troubled woman within: proper well-brought-up ladies can have passions, too, a marriage ceremony is no guarantor that all will be well 'til death do them part, and she, like so many before her and after, struggles when smoldering embers flare and she senses that the 'groove' of her comfortable, uneventful marriage may actually be 'rut'.As would be expected of De Sica, his rendition of the setting -- the newly rebuilt Stazione Termini itself, trains, travelers -- is so accurate as to pass for a recording, and protagonists as well as the concentrically-involved supporting cast embed within it void of staging, with total plausibility.The arrest scene and its aftermath also verges on documentary in its genuinity. The strict proprieties of post-WWII Rome -- for some Romans very genuine, for others hypocritical sham even then -- may seem contrived to a young American or British viewer today, but the inevitable tension was very real at the time, and De Sica presents its effects honestly, and with éclat.Give Stazione Termini a chance. Enter the time and place. De Sica managed to do a fine job of it, in spite of Selznick's ill-advised meddling, and he deserves far more more credit than he's normally given for this effort. So does Jennifer Jones, who is magnificent here.