You’re talking to me as if I were a man of honour – I’m not! Phaedra (Sophia Loren) is a sponge diver on the Greek island of Hydra who finds a valuable statue underwater. She and her idle Albanian boyfriend Rhif (Jorge Mistral) try to figure out how to sell the treasure so that they can leave their life of poverty behind. She goes to Athens, where she meets Dr. James Calder (Alan Ladd) an American archaeologist working in Greece to restore national treasures. He can only pay them a small finder’s fee for the piece. Then a millionaire treasure hunter Victor Parmalee (Clifton Webb) wants the treasure for himself and organises to help Phaedra raise the treasure and smuggle it out of the country. He is happy to pay her for it – and for other things. Meanwhile, Calder joins in the chase for the statue and Phaedra lies to him about its whereabouts, hoping that he will give up or run out of money. Finally her little brother Niko (Piero Giagnoni) persuades her to do the right thing by giving the statue to her homeland, thus opening up the possibility of a relationship with Calder… Ivan Moffat and Dwight Taylor adapted David Divine’s novel and it was given the full Technicolor widescreen treatment in an attempt to emulate the success of Three Coins in the Fountain with that film’s director, Jean Negulesco. Cary Grant was supposed to co-star with his latest cinematic squeeze Loren (after The Pride and the Passion) but Ladd eventually replaced him because Grant’s wife the actress Betsy Drake narrowly escaped with her life when the liner Andrea Doria sank and he rushed home to be at her bedside. Ladd hated flying and while travelling to the set he and his wife were robbed on the Orient Express and arrived to less than adequate facilities on Hydra. He didn’t get on with Loren at all and insisted she be placed to meet him at eye level despite her being much taller. She looks spectacular and even if the film wasn’t the big hit the studio predicted, that cling-on swimsuit made Loren a huge star. While interiors were done in Cinecittà, the locations are simply spectacular: Hydra, the Acropolis, Rhodes, the Saronic Gulf, Meteora, Corinth, Mykonos, Delphi and the Aegean Islands: this is why colour film was invented. The title song is performed uncredited by the wonderful Julie London and Loren sings it in the story – as well as dancing and enchanting both Ladd and Webb, not the easiest of tasks, when you think about it.
mondomovies 