It Started in Naples (Shavelson-Rose; Paramount) ends, at least as far as its interest for adults is concerned, when Clark Gable and Sophia Loren engage in a water ballet pas de deux in the Blue Grotto. But this foolishness does not occur until fairly late in the film, and what precedes it is noisy, cheerful and frequently funny. A good part of the reason is a nine-year-old rowdy named Marietto, who plays an Italian urchin and clowns well enough to deserve two names.
Gable is a Philadelphia lawyer who flies to Naples to wind up the affairs of a black-sheep brother who has died when his sailboat capsized. Gable learns from Attorney Vittorio De Sica that his brother's estate consists of $14,000 worth of unsalable fireworks and the rocket-propelled Marietto, a by-blow for freedom conceived with the help of an unmarried lady who is also dead. The boy lives in Capri with his Aunt Sophia, a cabaret canary who describes herself aptly as Gable's "sister-not-in-law."
Marietto knows his way around every thing except the local schoolhouse and is just old enough to appreciate the fact that he is just small enough to be hip-high to a pair of toreador pants. Sophia plays the sort of doll who scratches where she itches, and sees nothing wrong with the lad's education. Gable, of course, tries to reform Marietto. "After all," he reasons, "you're part American." Says the live-end kid: "You no tell anyone, I no tell anyone." When Gable sees the boy touting for Sophia's gin mill late one night, he tells him sternly, "Go home and dream about Indians — men Indians."
Naturally, a custody suit is filed, and naturally, De Sica, hired by Gable to represent him, pays more attention to Loren than to law. Some fine shouting matches occur, in one of which an enraged bystander, delivering a memorable non sequitur, shouts at Gable, "Get out of the Middle East!"
All four principals are expert comedians, especially those two aging but indestructible charmers, Gable and De Sica.
Song Without End (William Goetz; Columbia) records two noteworthy advances over Hollywood's customary great-musician gassers. The first must have caused mutterings in Beverly Hills: the film, although it concerns Franz Liszt, is not called The Franz Liszt Story. The second is that Dirk Bogarde, who plays the 19th century pianist-composer, has learned to waggle his fingers in convincing imitation of a virtuoso in full cadenza. The innovation is not negligible; it eliminates that hoary sham in which the cameraman shoots from behind the piano while the actor at the keyboard moves his arms up and down as if he were washing a pair of socks.