THREE COINS IN THE FOUNTAIN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 790, 10 September 1954, Page 26

THREE COINS IN THE FOUNTAIN

(20th Century-Fox-CinemaScope) AST experience had suggested to me that CinemaScope was but the illusion of an illusion, or (alternatively) that these ageing bloodshot optics were guilty of some sort of muscular accommodation which absorbed the impact of the new screen with distressing celerity. For ten or fifteen minutes, perhaps, I would be conscious of the latter-day spread, but from about that point onward the impact would diminish rapidly and the size of the screen image would then only occasionally be apparent. These impressions, however, I am now prepared to revise. Whatever shortcomings it may have (and the story is thinnish three-ply), Three Coins in the Fountain seemed to me more consistently CinemaScopic than other recent feature-length films in the same medium. Not only are the cameramen learning, but the script department appears to be getting acclimatised, too. This process has a long way to go still, but progress is being made-at least, it was not the fault of the camera, or of the dimensions of the background that made the human figures here so frequently minuscule. It still seems to me

that a story requires to have some heroic element if it is to fill the mind as effectively as the large screen fills the eye, but there is no doubt that a _ heroic background can _ eke things out. Three Coins is, beyond quibble, magnificently photographed (Milton Krasner, plus De Luxe colour) over most of the distance. True, the scenery is getting familiar; this time we have three Roman holidays instead of one -and a side-trip to

Venice for good measure. But Rome will remain worth looking at, and the anamorphic lens gives us a better than Baedeker’s-eye view of the grandeur that was and still is. By contrast, the adventures of the three smart girls (Dorothy Maguire, Jean Peters, and Maggie McNamara) were pretty conventional, though none seemed to fit precisely into the love-at-first-sight category. With the fountains of Rome playing fit to bust, it was more like love-in-a-mist. In a week when little worth looking at was offering, it is perhaps self-indulgent to be critical, but I found it irksome to contemplate the gulf

which separated my standard of living from that enjoyed by three young sectetarial typists. Their living quarters were such that only CinemaScope could do them justice, and to have it explained as a dollar-exchange benefit seemed tactless. Hard currency is no insurance against hard feelings-if I may coin a phrase.