Jennifer Jones stars as a rich Philadelphia housewife ending her affair with an Italian lover, played by Montgomery Clift, while waiting for the train to Paris in Rome’s Termini Station. De Sica combines Hollywood melodrama (the sweeping score, the soft-lit close-ups) with Neo-Realist touches (the Italian non-actors who populate the station). Draped in fur and dressed in a tailored Dior suit, Jones anxiously drifts through the station in a state of existential crisis while the weary Italians deal with a hundred small daily struggles around her. Her Roman romance has shattered whatever illusions she had about marriage and motherhood. She hastily buys a doll for her daughter at a gift shop, but just as quickly abandons it on an empty seat; the film is filled with these brutal, yet subtle, asides. Her struggle to make a decision to either go home to her family or stay in Rome becomes a study in compassion. Jones was married to producer David Selznick, who did not get along with De Sica. Selznick recut the finished film, removing the Neo-Realist touches and important establishing shots, and released it under the title Indiscretion of an American Wife. De Sica wasn’t happy with either version, but his original cut, presented here, is both experimental and moving.