Flowers from Nice

A homeless girl gets taken in by a painter.

Roger, editor of a women's magazine, meets Roberte, his friend Jean's former mistress, at a major couturier's during a collection presentation. Roberte, who now lives in Florence with her niece Maria, asks Roger to arrange a student exchange so that Maria can come to Paris to perfect her French. Roger approaches Jean's son Philippe, a student at the Beaux-Arts, who agrees to go to Florence. Maria and Philippe meet on the platform at Pisé station. They miss their respective trains and take a walk together. A flirtation begins, then each goes back to the other. Jean finds Maria charming and, like an unrepentant Don Juan, decides to win her over, but thanks to his old maid, his intrigues come to nothing and Maria can marry Philippe.

The famous American pianist, Hans Martenrood, is playing for the first time in Europe. A young boy is waiting for him in his hotel room after the concert with a letter from his mother, Marie, which explains, that Hans is the father of the boy and that she believes he would be better off being with his father. A short time later, Marie is found in a hotel room, critically wounded by two gunshots. Detective During is put to work on the case. He arrests a suspect, who is identified by the maid and porter as being Marie’s last visitor. At first, the man says nothing; but then he tells the detective Marie’s story.

The movie is about a student in Turin during the 1920s (moved up from the earlier versions) and his love for a a seamstress. The student, Mario, is played by Walter Slezak; the girl Dorina by Carmen Boni. The femme fatale Elena (Elena Sangro) threatens the relationship. When school days end, seen here as a kind of transitory idyll, it is "farewell to youth" as the title states, and a melancholy goodbye to youthful romances as well to allow new lives to take form.

There’s a war on, yet the last days of October pass by “sunny and tranquil” as warm rays light up an expansive ocean. The grand liners Titan and Oceania cross the Atlantic to Europe. Yet under the seemingly placid surface of the water looms the threat of submarines, “vipers of the sea”. The Oceania is torpedoed and quickly sinks. After the dramatic intensity of the opening, however, Il siluramento dell’Oceania seems to swiftly abandon the echoes of the Lusitania and its burden of tragedy, channeling itself into the more frivolous tides of the typical adventure drama fashionable at that time, unafraid of either improbable coincidences or clichéd characters. Cecil Tryan plays the heroine, a beautiful heiress unjustly banished with her mother from her ancestral castle. She weeps at the thought of no longer being able to order seven dresses in one go from her tailor, and ultimately falls in love with the courageous captain, also a survivor, who saves her life and fortune.

The young Augusto Genina directs this matrimonial comedy with verve, capturing the right tone and rythms. The Count and Countess Valmonte are a likeable and close-knit couple, but he spends too many evenings at his club, at least as far as she is concerned. Is there something behind these absences?

In the spring of 1913, Jean Servin, a son of a family, became friends with Roberte, a little midinette. He leaves her a few months later to marry Cécile Breton. The years go by. Jean becomes an important businessman. One evening, he meets Roberte, who has become the wife of a wealthy American. She does not love her husband any more than he loves his wife. They recall their memories. They seem to still love each other. They plan to rebuild their lives. Together, they will spend a few days in Dieppe, as they did in the past after their first meeting. They feel so different from what they were twenty years ago that they understand that the past cannot live again.

In order not to compromise the great music hall star with whom he spent the night, a man is accused of a murder he did not commit.

While recuperating from their injuries in a hospital, three young women flash back to the events leading up to the catastrophe. Remata (Lia Amando) has spent her entire life trying to overcome a childhood rape. Annamaria (Antonella Lualdi) has recently come out of an unfortunate marriage to a wealthy but insensitive boor. And Gianna (Eleanore Rossi Drago), the daughter of a college professor, has ruined her life with narcotics.

A wardrobe mistress at a Vienna theatre wins a competition, receiving as her prize a luxury tour round Italy. On the train she meets an impoverished young Italian who pretends to be a prince.

In L'innamorata, Almirante is at the zenith of her career, starring as Mara Flores, a vampish society lady, who casts her eyes on Carlo, an electrical engineer and director of a powerplant. Although attracted to Mara, he rejects her, and she immediately turns around and sinks her fangs in his best friend and future brother-in-law, Franco. Not possessing Carlo's self-composure, Franco takes up with Mara, and it leads him to his ruin and death. Now, Carlo does fall under Mara's spell, and as their passion intensifies, it becomes clear that there will be no happy end to this story.

Lucienne, typist and gorgeous bathing beauty, decides to enter the 'Miss Europe' pageant sponsored by the French newspaper she works for. She finds her jealous lover Andre violently disapproves of such events and tries to withdraw, but it's too late; she's even then being named Miss France. The night Andre planned to propose to her, she's being whisked off to the Miss Europe finals in Spain, where admirers swarm around her. Win or lose, what will the harvest be?

Unlike most Italian films of the 1940s, Augusto Genina's Cielo Sulla Palude opened in Venice rather than Rome. The film's American title was Heaven Over the Marshes, and indeed most of the story is set in the disease-ridden Pontine Marshes on the outskirts of Rome. This was the home of Maria Goretti, a pious young girl who was murdered by her would-be seducer. For reasons elucidated in the course of the film, Maria's short time on earth made her worthy of Sainthood, which was actually bestowed upon her shortly after the release of this film. Maria Goretti is well-played by Ines Orsini. Cielo Sulla Palude served as the comeback feature for director Augusto Genina, whose previous pro-fascist films had caused him to be blacklisted after WW II.