Black Orchid concerns the story of two neighbors both of whom lost their respective spouses and seem like a natural match for each other. But for their respective children the ship of romance would have some smooth sailing.

Sophia Loren is a bit young to play a middle aged widow, but she carries it off beautifully. She was a bride fresh from Italy when she married her husband and she fell in love with the material wealth of America. It cost her husband his life when he turns to being a gangster to give his wife all she desires. She also shuns and is shunned by the neighborhood.

Anthony Quinn is a widower whose wife died years earlier and left him to raise daughter Ina Balin who was making her big screen debut. Although she is engaged to Peter Mark Richman she wants him to move in with her and her father and Richman who has his business in another town wants his own household.

As for Loren's kid Jimmy Baird he's on a youth farm for youthful offenders. How he reacts to his mother's new romance is a bit unusual but in keeping with how the adult characters are drawn in this drama.

What I liked about Black Orchid is the sheer ordinariness of the people yet some great drama is played out across the screen. No heroes or villains, just people going about the day to day business of living. For a writer it's probably the most difficult to find a story with these characters, but it is done beautifully in Black Orchid.

Case in point. Anthony Quinn and Sophia Loren were together before in the Italian film Attila where Quinn plays the title role the scourge of Europe and Loren is a pulchritudinous and seductive Roman princess. Two totally different types, but that's a tribute to the acting ability of the stars.

This is a film that should get more attention and maybe it will some day.

I liked "The Black Orchid", as it's a film that works well because the script is very good and the acting really carries it off well. Too many films feature everything but fine acting--so this one is a great lesson to aspiring actors and folks who want to learn to appreciate more than explosions and the like.

The film begins with the death of a gangster. He's left a mixed up son and a beautiful but mixed up wife (Sophia Loren). Because of some sense of guilt for pushing her husband to succeed, he chose organized crime--and now she feels responsible for killing him. Her penance is to shut herself away from the world and be miserable. However, a gregarious widower (Anthony Quinn) is determined to break through this wall. He figures that they both are lonely and they should make a go of it.

When it comes to Loren's change from closed and unhappy to falling in love with Quinn, this is probably the weakest point in the film. It happens very quickly--as if some period of time is missing. However, considering that their being in love and wanting to get married is NOT the main point of the film, this can be forgiven.

The hiccup in this relationship is, surprisingly, not from Loren's son. While he is in reform school, he likes the idea of the marriage. The problem is Quinn's adult daughter. She has an almost incestuous bond with her father and she is determined to do anything to prevent him from remarrying--even if it means her losing her own chance for marriage. While this may seem a bit unrealistic, as a family therapist, such reactions from daughters to the prospect of their widowed fathers remarrying isn't that unusual--and is the great basis of a film.

All this works together very well due to the acting. Quinn is simply great--very likable and decent. As for Loren, it's one of her earliest English language films--and she is exceptional. In particular, I loved her body language and expressions. As for the rest, the ensemble cast is uniformly good. While this is not an exciting film, it is very well done and deserves to be seen. A sweet and worthwhile romance that will probably leave you feeling a bit misty-eyed.

I never knew about this film until I saw it on Netflix and decided to rent the DVD. I have always loved Sophia Loren. Along with Audrey Hepburn, she was my favorite female star growing up. Here's a 50s kitchen sink drama that if you look too hard seems awfully implausible. Loren plays the widow of a mafioso who has been killed drying to give his Italian-born wife (Sophia) everything her heart desires. Now a grief-stricken widow, she's trying to make ends meet while coping with a son who keeps running away until he is sent to a reform school. Her nosy next-door neighbor wants to fix Sophia up with a family friend, but Sophia resists, wallowing in her own self-pity and guilt, convinced her desire for material needs has caused her husband's death.

Enter Athony Quinn, a somewhat older man--a widower with a grown daughter (Ina Balin) on the eve of her own marriage. Quinn's wife has died, apparently suffering from some form of mental breakdown and Quinn's daughter has been lovingly and obsessively taking care of her father. Quinn notices Sophia and falls for her right away. After resisting his advances, she finally begins to date him and in not time at all, Quinn proposes, saying he will sell the New York home in Little Italy and move to Somerville, NJ near his factory, and help her get her son out of reform school and live happily as a family.

The difficulty here is Quinn's possessive daughter, who is now insisting that her fiancé move into with her and daddy after they marry. He understandably balks at the suggestion and whenever they argue, she has the bad habit of simply walking away from him.

Of course when she finds out that her Dad wants to marry "that Mafia woman," Quinn's daughter has a meltdown. In a confrontation, Daddy slaps daughter who retires to her bedroom refusing to come out. All is resolved when Sophia takes matters in her own hands and confronts the daughter. Sophia and Quinn are blissfully reunited, and her son is released form the reform school. The daughter is reconciled with her fiancé, and they all live happily ever after.

This is utterly absurd and doesn't make a bit of sense. However, under Martin Ritt's expert direction, Sophia delivers an expert, subtly acted performance that she would later become truly famous for. Quinn is outstanding, but you've seen this big, sensitive and physically imposing performance before. The daughter's role is the big hole in this movie, and newcomer Balin cannot do a thing to make her likable. The rest of the cast does their job expertly.

Still the movie achieves wonderfully acted moments and anything that Sophia did during this period is worth watching. Her Hollywood years didn't yield a lot of outstanding studio movies, but she always transcends the thin material she's given. Sophia's essential luminescence always shines through. More than worthwhile.