"Three Coins in the Fountain" is a romantic film of 1954 that especially appealed to young women (and some men) who dreamed about love matches in the romantic 1950s. Today, it might be called a chick flick by the would-be macho set. It's based on a 1952 novel by John Sedondari, "Coins in the Fountain." He was a Rome-born writer, producer and director who also co-wrote the screenplay for this film. The movie is a light comedy and drama, and is about three American women working in Rome, each of whom seems spurned or ignored at first but then finds "true" love.

The film has a fine cast, and the story is so-so. The movie also spurned a hit song by the same title, sung by Frank Sinatra in the film. It won the Academy Award for best original song. Julie Styne wrote the music and Sammy Cahn the lyrics. The Four Aces turned it into a number one hit on the 1954 U. S. pop chart. Several other recordings were made after that.

While the story is okay, a big plus for the film is its cinematography and scenic shots of and around Rome. The best of these are scenes of some of the many glorious fountains of the eternal city. The granddaddy of them all, the Trevi Fountain, is center stage for the opening and closing.

One interesting aspect of the story is with the lead male and female characters. Clifton Webb plays John Shadwell, an expatriate American who has lived in Rome most of his adult life. Dorothy McGuire plays Miss Frances, his secretary for the past 15 years. That means that she was in Rome since 1939, and the two of them lived through World War II. That would have included the early years when Benito Mussolini's Italy was allied with Nazi Germany, and the later German occupation of Rome. I don't know how Sedondari treated that in his novel, but it seems strange that there's not a hint of the war having just been over less than nine years, or of Miss Frances having been there during that time. It seems that Anita (Jean Peters) and Maria (Maggie McNamara) would have asked Frances about that at some point.

A funny line by Shadwell stands out. He says to Prince Dino di Cessi (played by Louis Jordan), "These girls in love never realize they should be honestly dishonest instead of being dishonestly honest.

'Three Coins in the Fountain' is a film about three American secretaries that throw their coins into a fountain in Rome and hope for romance. The music in the film and in the opening scenes is sung by Frank Sinatra. The film has a good story that holds the interest; pacing and the editing between the three stories of the girls and their romances are done well. Another excellent feature of this film is the photography. The opening sequence with the fountains in Rome and Frank Sinatra's music is beautiful. There are other beautiful scenes in the film of the Italian countryside and Venice. In summary, this is an old-fashioned romantic film that displays how three women find love and the lengths that they will go to be in love.

Whilst ignoring the glossy subject matter of the film, this is a great satire on how America views Europe, and how that view is perceived by Europeans: the American characters are parochial and surprised whenever another fellow countryman displays any culture, whilst the European characters are all stereotypically over-sexed, over-stylised and painfully cultured. This film is about as European as "Happy Days" relates to the reality of life in America. Everyone lives in huge flats/houses, and the outside scenes look like they were filmed at 6 in the morning... if you've ever been to any European city, then you'll know that it's a lot busier and bustling than depicted here in the superbly photographed location shots. As usual, Europe is seen as living in the past, with all that funny sounding food and affected cultural idiosyncrasies, the buildings are all pre-historic, crumbling and steeped in shadow, the general public are depicted as being wolfish and spending most of their time pinching girls or riding around on scooters. It appears to be a "nouvelle vague" film, made for non-European audiences, as a joke at the expense of that audience. Look under the initial fluff, and there is quite a witty and biting satire on cultural mores.

Lighten up, boys and girls! You must allow the director to display irony and fun in a feel-good movie in Rome not long after the fall of fascism! And how exotic it must have appeared to most of the world's population who at that time had not travelled abroad.

It does make you wonder how those secretaries could afford those glamorous clothes, and be so close to princes and movers and shakers of post-war Rome. Perhaps a gentle poke at role reversal?

One of the best tunes ever written, wonderful locations, and I don't care a damn about the Trevi fountain behaving inconsistently - that is the nature of fountains, and in Rome they are all drenched in magic!

In Rome, Anita Hutchins (Jean Peters) picks up new arrival Maria Williams (Maggie McNamara) at the airport. She is to be Anita's replacement who is planning to go back to America. They are staying at a palatial apartment with Miss Frances (Dorothy McGuire) who is the secretary to the American author John Frederick Shadwell (Clifton Webb). The three women stop at the famous Trevi Fountain where they toss in a coin and make a wish. Anita and translator Giorgio Bianchi (Rossano Brazzi) have chemistry but company policy prevents them from dating. Maria is taken with the notorious playboy Prince Dino di Cessi (Louis Jourdan).

I don't care about the stories. I barely care about the characters although they seem fine. It's not anything to write home about. This is an amazing visual feast. Italy looks great and the wide screen embraces the vista. Forget the plot. Look at the screen. This is tourism porn. I love the many location shoots. It feels like a wonderful Italian vacation. Venice is picturesque. This is a beautiful travel show within a forgettable movie.

This typical early 1950s romance story has all of the "desk set" elements (found only in romantic dime novels): 3 American secretaries in Rome are searching for "meaning in life", hoping to find it in marriage. The desired suiters are equally "fairy tale-like", including a Prince (played by Frenchman Louis Jourdan), a handsome full-blooded Italian (epitemized by Rossano Brazzi) and a distinguished Englishman (played by Clifton Webb).

Old fashioned values are running rampant in this film. A "working girl" planning to marry was expected to leave her job to tend to full-time housework. Dating was a "no-no", branding a woman a "bad girl". Double-standards across the board. It definitely was a "man's world".

The romantic theme song popularized by the Four Aces endured as a favorite for nearly 50 years. Unfortunately the film itself has lost its mass appeal over time. Although similar in broad subject matter, films like the Tracy/Hepburn classic "Desk Set" or the hilarious "How To Marry A Millionaire" starring the trio Monroe/Grable/Bacall have maintained their cult status as true Hollywood Classics. "Three Coins In The Fouintain" is a mildly pleasant trip into post-WWII Italy, a time of simplicity amidst toil and poverty. Those who dream of "marrying a prince" may have their fill.

By the Fifties, the movie-going public was no longer satisfied with studio versions of far away places. They wanted to see the real thing and Hollywood had to give it to them. The year before Three Coins In a Fountain came out, Paramount had done another Rome based film in Roman Holiday. Though it had that winning romantic team of Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck, Paramount played it on the cheap and wouldn't splurge for color.

Not to be outdone by rivals, Darryl F. Zanuck went whole hog on terrific color cinematography and three romances. Dorothy McGuire, Jean Peters, and Maggie McNamara are three Americans sharing an apartment in Rome. Peters and McNamara work for a U.S. government agency and McGuire is secretary to expatriate novelist Clifton Webb.

The fountain of course is Rome's famous Fountain of Trevi where tourists are lured into throwing their pennies with the promise of good fortune and a return to the eternal city. Frank Sinatra sings the title song over the opening credits and the Four Aces also had a mega-hit out of that tune. I remember as a lad in the Fifties, hearing that constantly on the radio. It was a BIG factor in the success of this film and won an Oscar for composer Jule Styne and lyricist Sammy Cahn.

McNamara and Peters fall for Prince Louis Jourdan and aspiring lawyer and co-worker Rossano Brazzi respectively. They play the continental lovers effortlessly.

20th Century Fox during the 50s toned down Clifton Webb's acerbity in order to make him leading man material. They never quite succeeded, but Dorothy McGuire conveys that she has a deep and abiding affection for Webb.

The usual romantic complications occur, but it all works out in the end as it always does in these films.

But the star is Rome and even seeing it 50 years ago, you'll still want to a pack a bag and see the place after watching this film.

Don't look to movies to see how people lived in the past--most are far too glamorous for that--but to find out how they thought, or, rather, what their assumptions were. In this movie Maggie McNamara gets Louis Jourdan to fall in love with her by pretending to like everything he likes--modern art, opera, Roman food and wine, etc. What a wealth of social pathology is here revealed! We are supposed to believe that a man (even a wealthy, cultured, sophisticated man like this one) wants a wife who brings nothing at all to the party, who will never introduce him to anything new he might like, who will never disagree with him, in short is just a clone and a slave. (Didn't anyone ever tell him that a man who wants a mate who is exactly like him really wants...another man? But maybe he knows that, since he's such a pal of Clifton Webb's.) For her part, McNamara is shown as a gold-digger who is excited to have found a rich man who is also handsome and charming. But that's fine because this is what women do, right? This trick was hardly confined to this movie--it was used in other films and TV programmes. With a view of matrimony this bleak it's no wonder that since the following decade people started to give up on the idea of the man as money machine and the woman as doormat.

The view of the arts is depressing, too. McNamara merely parrots Jourdan's or her friend's opinions on art and music. She never tries to learn anything about them on her own, and she finds them hideously boring. Which all good Americans are supposed to, right? All that highbrow stuff is for phonies and foreigners! They had some nice clothes in the Fifties (if you didn't mind wearing a girdle so tight you could hardly breathe), but as for respect for intelligence and culture, forget it. Certainly no one with a tad of aesthetics would have pawned off Clifton Webb's auburn dye job on a helpless audience.

Not much to add to the other comments here, except to say that it may be understandable that this one got a Best Picture nomination in the 1954 Oscar derby if you were able to see a pristine print, with a stereo soundtrack, in a first-class theater as I had the opportunity of doing when it was first released. The opening sequence of numerous fountains in full flood as Frank Sinatra crooned the Oscar-winning title song was just dazzling to those of us Americans who hadn't yet made a Grand Tour of Europe. What followed contained no surprises, certainly, though some eyebrows were raised by the Jean Peters/Rossano Brazzi "illicit" romance. I never understood how Maggie McNamara ever passed muster with any studio's casting director, nor how the makers of this pastiche could have thought that the suavely handsome Louis Jourdan, playing an Italian of noble descent, would finally settle for a manipulative young American whose machinations had, prior to his capitulation, been nakedly revealed. The lovely Ms. McGuire setting her cap for the aging, fastidious old fop, so well incarnated by Mr. Webb, was another of the difficulties even those first audiences had in suspending their disbelief.

But, oh!, those glorious travelogue shots of Rome and Venice. Widescreens, back then, really were worth briefly deserting one's living room "boob tube" and letting one's mind drift into Nirvana as beautiful DeLuxe Color made one believe the world was an impossibly beautiful place. A new DVD version which approximates the original CinemaScope ratio is now available, a distinct improvement over the formatted VHS tape previously available.

Time hasn't been kind to certain films and THREE COINS IN THE FOUNTAIN is one of them. The story at its center is trite and only exists in order to show the splendors of Rome in color and CinemaScope to lure patrons away from their television sets when the film was made, in the mid-'50s.

The only performers emerging from the film unscathed are JEAN PETERS, gorgeous as a secretary looking for romance away from the office, and the two men who are in their physical prime and give the film's most ingratiating performances--ROSSANO BRAZZI and LOUIS JOURDAN, both being the prototypes of the sort of European men American women find so attractive.

DOROTHY McGUIRE is saddled with the role of a spinster (of 38) whose object of affection is CLIFTON WEBB (mid-'60s) who seems an odd choice for any woman and tries hard to be his usual urbane self. Nor is MAGGIE MacNAMARA any help as a conniving American girl who diligently learns the likes and dislikes of the man (Jourdan) she plans to trap into marriage. Miss MacNamara too often seems more annoying than charming.

But it's harmless fluff, nicely staged in real Italian locales so that there's something to look at when things get dull--as they often do. Surprisingly, the film--which gets off to a nice start with a rendition of the title song by Frank Sinatra--was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar.

Summing up: No surprises here, just a dull story that gets an occasional lift from the romance between Peters and Brazzi which is the best, but briefest, part of the whole film. As a story, it's all too familiar by now but Jean Negulesco manages to combine story and scenery with a fluid touch, disguising the fact that it's little more than a pleasant travelogue.

This pleasant comedy-romance opens with the beautiful view of the Fountain of Trevi in Rome, combined by another famous fountain garden at the villa d'Este in Tivoli where a great water organ exploits another attribute of moving water: its sound...

But in "Three Coins in the Fountain," the 'sound of music' is the fine title song - sung by Frank Sinatra - that carries the whole picture...

The film is about the search for love by a simple trio... Three American secretaries believing in love, and throwing their coins in the 'Fontana Di Trevi' for a wish, for a romance, for an idealized love...

The first person is Dorothy McGuire, the confidant secretary in love (since 25 years) with her elderly boss, the American writer Clifton Webb...

The second is Jean Peters, a pretty indecisive brunette, doubtful in seeking love in Italy with Rossano Brazzi...

The third, a decisive Maggie McNamara aspiring to catch a wealthy suspicious lover (Louis Jourdan) by the art of lying...

Webb, Jourdan and Brazzi bring to the production its significant flavor... The film, nominated for Best Picture, won two Academy Awards for Best Cinematography and Music Song...

With a stunning photography in CinemaScope and sumptuous Technicolor of Rome and Venice, the motion picture is in itself a thin entertainment, but the title song carried it...

It's hard to believe that films like this were popular at the time, but they were. The biggest drawback is the almost total lack of a story or stories; three American females fall in love in Rome, and that's it. It's a decent cast, though, and the performances are pretty good. There is fairly extensive footage of Rome and Venice which, given the lack of any real story at all, actually lends to the film's appeal. The eponymous song also won the Oscar that year. If you look up the word "contrived" in the dictionary, there should be a video of this film's ending -- a Hollywood happy ending, of course. Believe it or not, the film was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar -- Wow!

"Three Coins in the Fountain" is a typical 1950's "Women's Picture." Back then, Hollywood studio executives were sure that the only thing a woman ever wanted to do with her life was find a husband and get married.

Today, this film would be called a "chick flick." Modern feminists will probably hate it, because the three female leads seem to have marriage on their minds...and not much else.

In the movie, three secretaries share an apartment at the "Villa Eden" in Rome. It's one of those overly-spacious apartments that looks like it was decorated by a Hollywood set designer. How can they afford such a luxurious apartment? "Oh, the rate of exchange in Rome is very favorable for Americans." Uh huh.

Miss Frances (Dorothy McGuire) has been serving as secretary for John Frederick Shandwell (Clifton Webb), a snooty American writer, who has been living in Rome for the past 15 years. (As other reviewers have pointed out, this skips over the fact that they would have been living in Rome before and during World War II, an event that nobody ever mentions in the film.) He proposes marriage to her on the day before his doctor tells him he has only a year to live.

Frances' roommates, Anita Hutchins (Jean Peters) and Maria Willaims (Maggie McNamara), are working as secretaries at the United States Distribution Agency, one of those Hollywood "government agencies" with an eagle emblem on the door. Anita is about to return to America, because she can't find a man to marry in Rome. But then she finds love with Giorgio Binachi (Rossano Brassi), an Italian translator who works at the USDA. Unfortunately, Giorgio is immediately fired from his job for violating the USDA's policy against employees dating other employees, set in place by Mr. Burgoyne (Howard St. John), the doofus boss who runs the agency.

Meanwhile, Maria decides to ensnare Prince Dino di Cessi (Louis Jourdan), an Italian prince known as "the predatory prince." Maria pretends to like all the things the prince likes (Italian opera, playing the piccolo), to trick him into marrying her, but of course, she falls in love with him instead.

The movie's major strength is its outstanding cinematography, featuring beautiful views of Rome and Venice. But the story itself is dated and trite. The point of throwing "three coins in the fountain" is to ensure that you'll return to Rome. I don't think I'll return to *this* Rome.

Three Coins In The Fountain deftly weaves together three love stories about American secretaries in Rome. Miss Frances (Dorothy McGuire), who has been in Rome for 15 years, lives with a younger woman, Anita Hutchins (Jean Peters), and they're joined by another young woman, Maria Williams (Maggie McNamara), just arrived from the States.

Frances has been in love with her boss, the expatriate American writer, John Frederick Shadwell (Clifton Webb), all these years. Anita gets into a forbidden relationship with Georgio (Rossano Brazzi), a translator who works at her place of employment (a US government agency where office relationships between American girls and local men are taboo). Maria meets a playboy prince (Louis Jourdan), and comes up with a plan to get him interested in her as more than just a prospective conquest.

It's not deep, but it's all very well done, good to look at, fairly witty and generally involving. It's really the nicely-drawn characters, the somewhat sopisticated dialogue, the enjoyable performances that keep you interested, though the scenery is certainly worth the price of admission.

The music of Victor Young adds a great deal to the enjoyment of the film. Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn penned the title tune, sung by Frank Sinatra (offscreen) as musical accompaniment to a prologue that showcases the fountains of Rome.

Dorothy Jeakins designed the attractive fashions for the three women stars.

CinemaScope doesn't have the thrills on TV that it must have had on the big screens of the 1950s, but there is enough in the way of clever writing and attractive acting to interest the viewer. Three Coins In The Fountain is a fine example of colorful, light entertainment.

The film, while not being a total waste of time, provides very little interesting entertainment. The film follows three women on their hunt for husbands in Rome. The photography of Italy is gorgeous, of course, but the plot is trivial. The story lines of the two older women are considerably more interesting than the youngest of the three, who follows a prince (Louis Jordan).

As an audience, we know little the personalities of the characters other than what is revealed during their courtships. I know that it's hard to expect an illuminating portrait of women in a 1950's romantic comedy but it's hard to forget the sly comedy of Barbara Stanwyck in The Lady Eve, or the allure of Marilyn Monroe's talent in ....well, any of her films.

Overall, if you want to watch something wistful and entertaining, watch Louis Jordan's other film, Gigi, Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck in Roman Holiday.