In Rome, the lovely Maria (Sophia Loren) and the handsome Pasquale (Vittorio Gassman) meet cute one morning when both are drinking their morning coffee across the street from each other. A singer by trade, he bursts into an aria and asks her to marry him. She does. Months later, he has lost his job and they are struggling to get by. Maria revisits the Holy Souls in Purgatory orphanage where she grew up and visits Alfredo (Mario Adorf), the director of the orphanage, which he has made rich by setting up a saint statues factory. She tells him her problems, unaware that Alfredo has had a crush on her since she lived there. Meanwhile, Pasquale discovers an offer almost too good to be true: he can rent a 17th century palace in the middle of the city for free, as long as he agrees to keep the place clean for the absentee owner. The one drawback is that the place is supposed to be haunted by the ghost of a duke, but that doesn't bother Pasquale. Soon, Alfredo sneaks his way into the house, hiding in an attic room, hoping to seduce Maria into an affair. When Pasquale sees him in the house, he thinks Alfredo is the Duke's ghost. Farce ensues. For the most part, this is a cute and effective comedy, though it relies on a far-fetched solution to everyone's problems at the end. I've not seen much of Loren and she's good at farcical comedy, and Gassman and Adorf are even better. The scene in which Pasquale first sees Alfredo and thinks he's a ghost is perhaps the highlight of the movie, and a simple procession of nuns near the end provides another big laugh. When the sales agent is insisting there's a ghost in the house, Pasquale says, "Don't sound like Dracula all the time!" But the name of the orphanage provides the biggest laugh in the film. Worth seeing. Picture are Loren and Gassman. [TCM]
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