In addition, the famously snarled motor traffic on Rome's Via Venetto was diverted for three shooting days to accommodate the production schedule. According to some sources, Light in the Piazza was the first film to shoot in the astounding Uffizi Gallery in Florence, allowing art lovers access to historic treasures such as Michelangelo's David and Cellini's Perseus that could never be imitated by a studio props department. Shooting on location in Rome and Florence with interiors at Boreham Wood studios in England, director Guy Green and producer Arthur Freed enjoyed exceptional cooperation from Italian authorities. Naive, beautiful Clara enters a romance with a cultivated Florentine, (George Hamilton), and de Havilland must weigh her feelings against her husband's and decide whether to let their grown daughter live her life without meddling in it. Based on a novella by Elizabeth Spencer that first appeared in The New Yorker magazine, Olivia de Havilland stars as Margaret Johnson, an American woman who takes her mentally challenged adult daughter Clara (Yvette Mimieux) on a grand tour of Italy, hoping to enliven her life. As she watches the radiant Clara taking her vows, Margaret feels certain that she has done the right thing.Ī lovely romance with pragmatic undertones, Light in the Piazza (1962) gracefully handles the complex issues of disability, motherhood, and love. Margaret remains in Italy only long enough to see her daughter wed. The situation is quickly resolved when Clara's dowry is increased from $5,000 to $15,000. Then suddenly Signor Naccarelli asks, 'Why did you not tell me?' But with relief Margaret learns that he is referring only to the fact that Clara is 3 years older than Fabrizio. Margaret finally decides to remain silent about Clara's condition and permit the marriage to take place. Gradually she begins to feel that with the Naccarelli family Clara would somehow be safe-her every whim indulged by a devoted husband, her household needs cared for by servants, her children reared by a doting mother-in-law, and her childish nature treasured as innocence. Still uncertain, Margaret takes Clara back to Florence.

For the brusque and unsympathetic Noel there is only one solution: Clara must return to America and be committed to a mental institution. When it becomes apparent that the Naccarellis would be delighted to welcome Clara into the family, Margaret (unable to tell them the truth) cables her husband, Noel, to meet her in Rome. As Margaret Johnson watches the budding romance between her daughter and Fabrizio, she conceals the fact that Clara is a mental defective a childhood accident has left her with the mind of a 10-year-old. While vacationing in Europe with her mother, 26-year-old Clara Johnson falls in love with a handsome, well-to-do young Florentine, Fabrizio Naccarelli.

Light in the piazza novel