VividSimon Simply Perfect

TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

youseineko ... but I can't tell if it is or not because it isn't captioned. Please someone, caption this movie. I do appreciate that someone listened to my plea regarding another movie and 6 months later it was captioned.We hearing impaired people love movies, too. I especially admire Sophia Loren. She is so beautiful and sophisticated. I even read her beauty book years ago. If you want to know what it's like for us, watch the movie with the sound off. Even hearing people have grown to enjoy Closed Captioning for times when someone is making noise and they can't hear the TV.Thanks for reading this. Now I pray next time I see it on TCM it will be captioned.-Youseineko-

maurer_aina Sophia Loren's dancing partner was Dimitris Pantermarakis ( Dimitris Maras) who is also a Greek actor. The scene was taken in the island of Hydra. The choreography was from Yannis Flery along with the Dora Stratou's folklore ballet. At the time Dimitris was a reserve officer serving the Greek army. The film company requested Dimitris to go back to America with them, unfortunately that was not possible due to his army service. So he lost the opportunity an artist hopes for in a lifetime. The film was top notch. After the army Dimitris Maras Pantermarakis went on a very successful tour all over Europe working in many theaters, TV and motion pictures. Photos are available.

Gilbert BURBACH This film was one of 1957's top grossers mainly due to the fact that in those years the public wanted exotic European location shooting and the film certainly does a good job of showing Greece and Sophia Loren who is ravishing.The story is a thriller.Alan Ladd plays a archaeologist ,Sophia a poor sponge diver and Clifton Webb an unscrupulous collector of art.The plot is not really that important.What counts is the scenery and Sophia.Alan Ladd whom I have always considered as a very good actor, but underrated by critics does a good job,like always(he always tried his best), all the more so that his partner was really very much taller than him and he suffered from that.I don't understand why everybody made so much fuss about Alan Ladd's size.He was just as short or tall as Humphrey Bogart or James Cagney or even George Raft.The film is very enjoyable.

MartinHafer This is an amazingly lifeless movie despite it being filmed in Greece and being Sophia Loren's first American movie. While the Greek scenery is lovely, it's obvious that the biggest reason they chose Ms. Loren for the film was because of her ample breasts. Throughout the film, but particularly in the first diving scene, they are featured very prominently and it's a very risqué piece of film work for the 1950s (sort of like the movie THE DEEP in the 1970s). And, unfortunately, she is given a role that is very inconsistent and not particularly likable. Much of the movie concerns her wanting to help steal a valuable ancient statue she accidentally discovered while sponge diving. She is, through much of the film, amoral and self-centered. And, not very convincingly, at the end, she falls for Ladd and does the right thing with the statue! Predictable but also a bit ridiculous.Now to make things worse, some boob had the bright idea of pairing Loren with Alan Ladd--one of the shortest leading men of all time and about four inches shorter than her. This meant they had to do some interesting camera-work so she wouldn't tower above him. In addition, their chemistry is, at best, tenuous despite this being a love story. There just doesn't seem to be any "spark" between them. As for Ladd, his role is pretty mellow and subdued. Apart from some scuba diving, he just doesn't do all that much in the film. The bottom line for Ladd, Loren and the rest of the characters is that the parts just weren't written all that well and the people (aside from her little brother in the film) weren't very interesting or compelling. A dull time-passer and certainly no indication of the acting ability of either of its stars.