INDISCRETION OF AN AMERICAN WIFE: a couple of cheaters face the music

Despite it's extraordinarily short running time - just 1 hour and 4 minutes - INDISCRETION OF AN AMERICAN WIFE makes quite an impact although not all for the right reasons.

The drama focuses on the efforts of Mary, the titular woman (played by Jennifer Jones), and Giovanni (Montgomery Clift), the Italian-American with whom she has the indiscretion,to say goodbye to one another at Rome's central railway station. Mary is overcome with guilt at betraying her husband and abandoning her young daughter, and wants to get home to them both as soon as possible. Giovanni's not prepared to let her go and uses all of his considerable charm and smoldering looks to try and persuade her to stay. Imagine the final scene from 'Brief Encounter' minus the chilly British reserve and rigidly stiff upper lips and you'll have a good idea what to expect.
On the plus side, the black and white cinematography is beautiful, and Clift is a compelling presence. On the minus side Alessandro Cicognini's musical score is both unmemorable and overblown; unnecessarily serving as the aural equivalent of waves crashing onto seashore rocks, turning drama into melodrama.
But what really deals the fatal blow to the film's credibility is Jennifer Jones and - in particular - her seemingly bottomless fund of inappropriate facial expressions. Where-ever Truman Capote's script calls for her to exhibit sadness, passion, anger, fear or any other emotion, Jones appears to lose control of her facial muscles resulting in a random expression completely at odds with what's required.It's as if she's acting while wrestling with a particularly malevolent form of facial Tourette's Syndrome.
Director Vittorio de Sica reportedly shot a 90 minute version of the film which was then cut down to 64 minutes by Jones' husband, legendary producer David O.Selznick, for US release. While some cinephiles may lament the 'butchering' of de Sica's vision, I'm not sure I could have taken another 26 minutes of Miss Jones' facial contortions and Signor Cicognini's swelling strings.