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The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone

Screening on Film
Directed by José Quintero.
US, 1961, 35mm, color, 104 min.

Celebrated theater director José Quintero crossed over into film in order to adapt this Tennessee Williams novel for the screen. Vivien Leigh (already known for her portrayal of a Williams heroine a decade earlier in A Streetcar Named Desire) plays the title character, a American widow who has abandoned a waning career on the New York stage and come to Rome to assuage her spirits. Ready to assist Mrs. Stone is the legendary stage actress Lotte Lenya, cast as a procuress, and a very young Warren Beatty, the gigolo who attracts her attentions. The real star of this film, however, is the Eternal City itself, captured here in its various moods-glimmering and textured, gauzed and misty-by  cinematographer Harry Waxman.

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Rosine Mbakam, 2025 McMillan-Stewart Fellow