| Arrivederci Roma | |
|---|---|
Theatrical poster for the USA release |
|
| Directed by | Roy Rowland |
| Produced by | Lester Welch |
| Written by | Art Cohn and Giorgio Prosperi |
| Starring | Mario Lanza Marisa Allasio Renato Rascel |
| Distributed by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
| Release date(s) | 1958 |
| Running time | 107 minutes |
| Country | Italy United States |
| Language | English |
Arrivederci Roma (English title: Seven Hills of Rome) was an Italian film. Shot in 1957 on location in Rome and at the Titanus studios in the Italian capital, the movie was released by MGM in January 1958. It was tenor Mario Lanza's penultimate film.
The Technirama film tells the story of Marc Revere, an American TV singer of Italian heritage who travels to Italy in search of his jet-setting fiancée, Carol Ralston, played by Peggie Castle. Revere moves in with his comical and good hearted cousin Pepe Bonelli (Renato Rascel), a struggling artist who also befriends a beautiful young girl, Raffaella Marini (Marisa Allasio), whom Revere had met on a train. Like Lanza, this was Allasio's next-to-last film (the 17th of her career), as she would marry Count Pierfrancesco Calvi di Bergolo, grandson of King Victor Emmanuel III, King of Italy, in November 1958 and retire from the cinema.
Among the selections that Lanza sings in this "vocal tour de force" (Variety) is "Arrivederci Roma", performed in the Piazza Navona with a young street urchin. In typical Lanza fashion, the star had encountered the youngster while in Rome and insisted on her appearing in the film.
Lanza also performs a sequence of imitations of famous singers of the era — Perry Como, Frankie Laine, Dean Martin, and Louis Armstrong — committing to film what was one of his favorite party performances.
Opera selections include "Questa o quella" from Rigoletto.
The film was directed by Roy Rowland and was the first of only four films produced by Lester Welch. The screenplay was the last written by Art Cohn, who died two months after the film's release in the same airplane crash that killed famed producer Mike Todd, whose biography Cohn was writing at the time. Cohn partnered with Giorgio Prosperi on the script for the Lanza film, which was based on a story by Giuseppe Amato.
Arrivederci Roma was nominated for a Laurel Award (1959) from Motion Picture Exhibitor magazine.
The most common used title, Arrivederci Roma, was meant to be the American title of a film Lanza was scheduled to make in 1960, until he died in Rome in October 1959.