"Two Blue-Eyed Brats Stormed the Villa Fiorita to Rescue Their Mothers from Her Italian Lover," screamed the posters for The Battle of the Villa Fiorita (1965). The film starred Maureen O'Hara as a British housewife who falls in love with Italian pianist Rossano Brazzi. When her diplomat husband (Richard Todd) learns of the affair, he suggests that she go spend time with Brazzi and decide what she wants to do. The two lovers begin living together in his Italian lakeside villa, when her children (Martin Stephens and Elizabeth Dear) run away from home to join her in Italy and to break up the romance. It was a theme similar to O'Hara's hit, The Parent Trap (1961). Also in the cast were Olivia Hussey as Brazzi's daughter, Phyllis Calvert, Finlay Currie, and Ursula Jeans.

Based on the 1963 novel by Rumer Godden, with a script by director Delmar Daves (who also produced the film), The Battle of the Villa Fiorita was filmed on location in London and at Lake Garda on the Italian Riviera. The opportunity to appear in this film came at a time when O'Hara had been very vocal in the press of her dislike of modern movies and what she deemed to be "filth." She even went so far as to call for a boycott, and yet starred in this film about a wife and mother who runs off to live with her lover. Although O'Hara didn't seem to mind, Geoffrey Shurlock, then vice president of the Production Code Association, objected to some of the dialogue in The Battle of the Villa Fiorita , particularly a scene in which one of the children says the phrase "slept together".

According to author Aubrey Malone in his biography of O'Hara, the actress disliked making the film due to Brazzi's supposed bragging about his success as a lover, and suffered at the hands of a British cameraman when she rooted for the Italian team in a football game against the British. She is even said to have wept when she saw the film - not from emotion, but from anger when some of her love scenes here deleted from the final cut.

The film opened in New York City on May 10, 1965 before going in to wide release on May 26th but was not a box office hit. Eugene Archer wrote in his New York Times Review that although the film was "soggy, sentimental, and sort of nice."

The lack of success It really didn't matter; O'Hara was soon off to join James Stewart in The Rare Breed (1966), Olivia Hussey would become an international star only three years later when she starred in Romeo and Juliet (1968), and director Delmar Daves retired from films after a long and successful career.

by Lorraine LoBianco


SOURCES:
The American Film Institute Catalog: Feature Films 1961-1970
Archer, Eugene " Battle of the Villa Fiorita" Begins Engagement at Palace" The New York Times 27 May 65
The Internet Movie Database
Malone, Aubrey, Maureen O'Hara: The Biography
"On the Star Vue Screen" The Southeast Missourian 6 May 66