Let's be realistic.

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

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

If anyone thinks that Walter Huston's singing is the memorable aspect of this film, they are mistaken or just dead emotionally.Yes, a small amount of disbelief, some details not developed but such a context for a love affair. Very Beautiful. A simple post WWII romantic film shot with wonderful Italian backdrops. Joan Fontaine is of course the jewel in this film. Beautiful haunting displays of emotion and thoughts. A wonderful performance in a thought provoking film. If you ever had the opportunity, would you leave the life you live now for the life you imagine that would make you blissful?

An unhappily married industrialist and a pianist engage in a passionate romance after they are presumed dead in a plane crash. It gets off to a slow start, with the early scenes feeling more like a travelogue than a drama, as the lovers take a tour of Italy. However, things start to get interesting about half way through as the plot thickens. Fontaine and Cotten are charming as the lovers who find a second chance for happiness. A young and pretty Tandy plays Cotten's long-suffering wife. Given all that has transpired, the ending seems contrived and unsatisfying, perhaps restricted by the censorship in effect at the time. Rachmaninov's second piano concerto is effectively used as Fontaine's signature piece.

Except for a haunting version of the title song sung by Walter Huston, this is a trivial romance about two people who decide to run away for awhile among some lovely Italian settings before reality sets in and they realize they must return to their banal domestic lives at home.All of this happens after a plane crash finds Joan Fontaine and Joseph Cotten presumed dead, therein giving them a new start on their unhappy lives.With a more polished script and inspired direction, this might have been worth seeing. Fontaine and Cotten do their best to be sincere and charming, but none of it seems to matter when the predictable outcome looms like an elephant in the living room. Fontaine's career was approaching its gradual decline when she found herself trapped in this sort of banality that required nothing more than her still fresh looks and simple charm.Not much can be said for Jessica Tandy as Cotten's shrewish wife, nor Francoise Rosay, Robert Arthur and Jimmy Lydon in thankless supporting roles.Summing up: Trivial, pallid romance.

This is one great romantic film. Joan Fontaine and Joseph Cotten who are presumed to be passengers on a ill-fated flight and, though listed as among the dead, are actually alive. They fall in love and spend time together in a villa in Florence. The wonderful "September Song" weaves its magic throughout the film. Joan Fontaine is vivacious, luminous and charming in her role as Manina Stewart and Joseph Cotten is great as David Lawrence. This is one of my all-time favorite films. It is available on video.