Nonureva Really Surprised!

Keeley Coleman The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Roman Sampson One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Kamila Bell This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

preppy-3 This takes place in Florence Italy and was shot on location. American Meg Johnson (Olivia deHavilland) is visiting with her 26 year old daughter Clara (Yvette Mimieux). They meet handsome Italian Fabrizio (George Hamilton) and Fabrizio and Clara fall madly in love together. The problem is that Clara had an accident as a child and is emotionally at the age of 10. Meg protects her and is constantly with her. However she realizes Fabrizio and Clara really do love each other. What to do?The plot is interesting, the scenery is beautiful and it's very colorful. Also deHavilland has a different gorgeous dress for each scene...but this just doesn't work. It moves VERY slowly and turns into little more than a travelogue of Italy. There's not enough material here for a full movie...and it shows. Also Hamiltons' attempts at an Italian are downright hysterical. Also I didn't buy the final happy resolution for one second. Still the acting by Mimieux, Rossano Brazzi and especially deHavilland is great and it LOOKS good...but I found it incredibly dull. According to IMDb this lost money at the box office. It's easy to see why.It was revived as a Broadway musical in 2005 which was a modest hit and won a few Tonys. I didn't like that either.

janetlwil Pretty awful story of an Italian lothario pursuing what is basically a ten-year-old female - all with his family's good wishes. Supposedly by marrrying the lothario, the female will have a good life with plenty of servants, loving in-laws, and lots of money so that makes everything okay. Seems like nothing was thought about the emotional damage that might occur from a ten-year-old having sex with a man, understanding, pregnancy giving birth and being too much of a child to have any hope of ever being a "mother" to any children. And you have to wonder how long a grown man will be able to sustain interest in a child-wife who has no intellectual ability and that you can't take out for cocktails. But, no matter, mama has found a way out from the lifelong responsibility of the daughter so yippie all around.

newsuneed George Hamilton speaks English with an Italian accent, and Yvette Mimieux plays a retarded woman. Very 1962, if you like old movies, and I do. **SPOILERS FOLLOW** I cannot believe the treachery that's presented as the "happy ending." Olivia DeHavilland is portrayed as the hero of the movie, pretty much the mother of the year (I saw this movie as a TCM "Mother's Day" special) for the startlingly despicable act of not telling her retarded daughter's future husband and future in-laws that she's retarded. Jeepers creepers, how would you feel if you married someone thinking the lack of real communication was due to a language barrier, and it eventually dawns on you that it's something much more than that -- you've married a woman with the IQ of a 10-year-old? That's a horrendous thing to do to George Hamilton, his family, and your own daughter. Days later I'm still shaking my head "no."

bkoganbing As she got older Olivia DeHavilland picked and chose her roles a lot more carefully. An absence of three years such as the one she had before accepting Light In The Piazza was not unusual for her. I think it was in part a reaction to her days at Warner Brothers where she was put into a whole lot films she didn't like.At the time she made Light In The Piazza Olivia was living in France with her then husband Pierre Galante and raising their children. So a location shoot in Rome and Florence was no big move. Rome saw its share of films extolling the beauties of the Eternal City. But in this one the Renaissance beauty of Florence got its share of cinema immortality. The color cinematography of Light In The Piazza was its greatest asset.Olivia is on a mother/daughter holiday in Florence with Yvette Mimieux who when she was 10 was kicked in the head by a horse and has stayed at that age emotionally. But her physical development wasn't arrested any and she gets the attention of young Florentine George Hamilton. There's a whole lot of concern from both families because Hamilton is the same way.In addition to her daughter's romance, Olivia gets courted by Rossano Brazzi who is Hamilton's father. Some of the plot of A Summer Place is borrowed here as we glimpse into their married lives, Brazzi with the eternally crying Nancy Nevinson and DeHavilland with stuffed shirt Barry Sullivan who wants to institutionalize Mimieux because she's becoming an inconvenience.Light In The Piazza got an Oscar nomination for Best Sound. It was produced at MGM by Arthur Freed who was now out of the musicals business. Still this film has some of the decorative gloss that an MGM Freed musical you would expect to have. Yvette Mimieux may have given her best screen performance here. I think you'll agree.