The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1961)
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- Synopsis:
- Vivien Leigh plays Karen Stone, a middle-aged actress whose career is in a tailspin. To assuage her hurt feelings, Karen goes on a vacation to Rome with her husband, who dies en route. Her best friend (Coral Browne) compassionately arranges for a young Italian escort (read: gigolo) to keep Karen from wallowing in her grief in Rome. The man hired for the task is sneering, contemptuous Pablo di Leo, played by Warren Beatty. Despite Pablo's rude behavior, the lonely Karen throws herself at him, showering him with expensive gifts and demanding his undivided attention...
- Actors:
- Vivien Leigh, Warren Beatty, Coral Browne, Jill St. John, Jeremy Spenser, Stella Bonheur, Josephine Brown, Peter Dyneley, Carl Jaffe, Harold Kasket, Viola Keats, Cleo Laine, Bessie Love, Elspeth March, Henry McCarty, Warren Mitchell, John Phillips, Paul Stassino, Ernest Thesiger, Mavis Villiers
- Directors:
- José Quintero
- Writers:
- Tennessee Williams, Gavin Lambert
- Others:
- Lotte Lenya
- Genres:
- Classics, Drama, Romance
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Reviews (1) of The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone
Classic Williams. - The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone review by Steve
Vivien Leigh's penultimate screen appearance was a return to Tennessee Williams, after her Oscar for A Streetcar Named Desire in 1951. And she plays another vulnerable woman seeking refuge from the passing of time and her fear of death. Karen Stone is a middle aged American actor fleeing artistic failure to the ruins of Rome.
Where she becomes reluctantly absorbed into a human marketplace where rich Americans of a certain age, travel to Italy to find sexual diversion among the gigolos and ingenues of a country still palpably defeated and impoverished by WWII. Warren Beatty is a beautiful, penniless aristocrat who pursues Mrs. Stone for the luxuries that his birthright no longer provides.
There is an impression of fallen dynasties. Karen is a stage legend who feels the grasp of time on her shoulder. Her lover is an aristocrat with no land, compelled to hustle for dollars and jewels. They drift through the ruins of the capital of an ancient empire like ghosts. They have no real function, so they lash out and hurt each other.
It's a haunting experience. Mrs. Stone is literally stalked by death! There's a moving performance from Leigh, as her own life was beginning to unravel. The script is poetic, and the portrayal of Rome before the era of mass tourism is spectacular but poignant, even pitiful. It's a political film which reflects on the buying and selling of humanity. And it's a human tragedy about the last days of a lonely woman.