DKosty123 Gable looks old here, though they really lathered on his hair color to make Clark look younger. The story has him as a Philadelphia Lawyer. That would make him the bane of Groucho Marx jokes about them, but here Gable is not in court.He is in Naples and the lucky guy gets to meet a young beauty, Sophia Loren. Then he has an affair with her, and steals the heart of her son. What steals the show here is the great filming locations. Naples looks great in technicolor. The location shooting is a bonus and I am sure Gable enjoyed the trip, I mean to be portrayed as a lover young enough to handle Loren is a stretch, but most men in their late 50's would think they were living the dream if they could do this.For some reason, late in his career, Gable got many roles with the hottest women around. I mean after this he finishes with Marilyn Monroe. Before this, well there was Doris Day. I will tell you this, if I had been Gable, I would have died with a smile on my face. His reputation as a great lover is on display here, and his boyish type of charm is too. Not a great film, but definitely a good one.

dimplet Don't overthink this movie; just watch it and enjoy it. We're talking Doris Day era here, but it's not that sugary sweet; Gable's cynical commentary gives it a bit of an edge. This cynicism is the key to understanding the movie. The Gable character was a soldier during World War II and helped liberate Italy. It is now 15 years later, and he is still resentful, remarking that the Italians were stealing gasoline from the Americans and selling it on the black market almost as soon as they arrived. He thinks his deceased brother a fool for having fallen for an Italian woman, a trap he avoided during the war. The film is also about the conflicting values of a straight-laced American lawyer and a beautiful Italian dancer-singer, or more to the point, between America the ambitious, versus Italy, represented by the notorious Isle of Capri, capisce? Gable wants to get his business done and get out as quickly as possible, but with time he comes to appreciate the beauty and relaxed lifestyle of Capri. And he discovers that the Italians have pride in their own country, and some resentment towards Americans. As such, the movie should hold up well for those foreign viewers who are so prejudiced against America and American movies. They can have a good time sneering at American values, represented by Gable. I don't have any problem with the chemistry; while watching the movie, I thought that perhaps the reason they made it was for Loren and Gable to have a little fling together. I was surprised to read they didn't get along so well. This movie is worth seeing, not just for Gable and the always gorgeous Sophia Loren, but for the reasonably interesting story line. It's not Gone with the Wind or It Happened One Night, but it is still two hours well spent.Spoiler: The plot is only resolved when Gable realizes, due to a chance encounter, that his deep-seated prejudices against the Italians were not justified. Well, not entirely. Sophia was trying to manipulate him, of course, but what woman doesn't? And the business with Gable's lawyer was curious. She couldn't have bribed him. I suppose she whispered a little blackmail in his ear, most likely a reminder of a mutual affair.

MartinHafer In many, many ways, this film appears to have later been made as AVANTI (with Jack Lemmon and Juliet Mills). The plots have just too many similarities to be a coincidence. While not exactly a remake, this later film seems like a slight reworking of the plot--with a little bit of gratuitous sex and nudity added to boot.The film begins with Clark Gable going to Italy to take care of arrangements after his brother's accidental death. This no-good brother had apparently been living a double life--with a wife back in the States AND one in Italy! Gable is surprised to not only discover this, but that there is an 8 year-old boy who is apparently his nephew! He's also surprised that the boy's Italian Aunt (Sophia Loren) isn't particularly interested in establishing a relationship with Gable or having the boy go to live in the States. Considering that the boy is a ragamuffin living in a rather bohemian existence, this might just be in the kid's best interest--at least that is what Gable assumes. Over time, the blustering Gable comes under the spell of the island of Capri and Loren's ample charms.Oddly, however, the film makers thought that pairing Gable and Loren romantically made sense and that the public would buy it--and they didn't. The age difference was just too great. Additionally, the styles and personalities of the two were just too different to make such a pairing believable--though at least it worked better than Loren and John Wayne (LEGEND OF THE LOST) and a bit better than Loren and Alan Ladd (BOY ON A DOLPHIN). Why film makers insisted on pairing this sexy starlet with significantly older established American actors is beyond me.So, while the film isn't exactly believable, is it worth watching? After all, although miscast, the film could still be enjoyable. And, for the most part it was, though including a "cute and precocious" kid was, at times, a bit too much of a cliché. He was too cute and way too precocious to be realistic--walking, talking and acting like a 30 year-old man stuck in a kid's body--sort of like Tatum O'Neal in PAPER MOON. Also, some might find its treatment of Italians as a bit patronizing--as they all seem rather lazy and fun-loving--not like real people. As for the look of the film, it was terrific--filmed in exquisite color that really made this Italian island look its best. Overall, it's an enjoyable and nice looking piece of fluff--not bad, just not as good as it could have been.By the way, supporting actor Vittorio De Sica was also a very accomplished director. He acted in quite a few films and was quite good, but as a director he was one of the best, with such wonderful films as UMBERTO D, MIRACLE IN MILAN and THE CHILDREN ARE WATCHING US to his credits--among others.

jumbopasatebos This movie had everything on paper, a great American actor(Gable), beautiful locations and the ever-adorable Sophia Lauren. But the script is so poor and idiotic that totally ruins everything...So, Gable, your typical Yankee, arives at Naples after his brother's death.He finds out that his brother had a secret second marriage and a child who currently lives with his Aunt (Lauren). Basically what the director wanted was to demonstrate the difference of go-like-it Italians and the more sober, cold, calculating Americans, a premise so stale and stereotypical that would need a special amount of skill to be formed into something watchable. And sadly this was not the case. Actually this movie is pretty brave, in a peculiar way. It has the audacity to denounce the whole neo-realistic Italian cinema where all these poor people struggle through life and it's miseries. Alas, what offers instead is a stereotypical view where poverty is equal to a happy ignorance. All the Italian characters are rude, messy and quarrel but always in a happy and delightfull way... They all try to speak "funny" English and although they are illiterate they manage it pretty good... They are not poor because of the war's damages , they are poor because they like it and they cannot do much better...Even so, if this movie had any kind of charm I could still accept it as your shallow typical romance comedy but, here, every joke literally back-fires at the character's faces. Take for example Nando, the little boy. He is illiterate, smokes and distributes Cabaret leaflets but that's OK because he is Italian and does not need an education. He lives with a prostitute in a dump but he's good and likes fireworks so that's OK... The American again loves hamburgers, tries to teach his nephew baseball etc.His fiancée dumbs him,only because she hears music from the telephone and does not know that in Italy it is OK to play loud music all day and all night...He tries to enlist Nando in an American school that will give him proper education, because all Italian schools must be really bad (they stretch the American school joke so far that you can't possibly imagine...) The acting is also really terrible. Gable stumbles across the film like a joke of his old self,and Lauren tries to be decent but has so little to work with and cannot save herself..This movie in all aspects is a total waste...