Souvenir d’Italie (It Happened in Rome) is a light mid-century comedy following three young women: the British Margaret, the German Hilde, and French Josette, foreigners abroad in Italy, as their misadventures take them from the Riviera to Rome.

As a work of visual media, it features gorgeous location photography across northern and central Italy, including Portofino, Venice, Florence, Pisa, and Rome. It’s like a moving postcard, a colorful, romantic time capsule of beautiful, inviting places to discover.

The settings are so captivating, it’s easy to focus on the locations rather than the dull action onscreen. Director Antonio Pietrangeli has made a number of great films led by women, including I Knew Her Well and Adua and Her Friends, but Souvenir d’Italie doesn’t bring come close to those levels of gravitas, depth, and dignity for the girls here. In this uncomplicated story, Margaret is a more reserved, uptight type (she even wears glasses!) while the fun-loving Hilde and Josette bring her out of her shell. By trusting strangers and taking risks, the trio never finds themselves in any danger, but in fact find new, compelling personalities along the way, and even potential love interests.

The takeaway is to jump into life without reservations, being unafraid to hitchhike and be spontaneous, opening oneself up to what the world, and Italy, has to offer. What Italy has to offer, to all three of them, are men; each girl finds a match, each in different cities, with varying degrees of success. Josette’s beau, Sergio, is played by a young Alberto Sordi, who in particular is fun to see, here in color, well into his illustrious career but in a supporting role.

The perspective brought to this film, an Italian production by an Italian director, is interesting given that the story’s gaze into Italy is from three non-Italian characters. By following their escapades through some of the country’s most iconic cities, the movie seems tailored for a non-Italian audience, like an honorary member of the “Hollywood in the Tiber” era, of foreign productions made in Italy. The country is showcased here as a destination that must be seen, as well as a backdrop for discovering oneself. Released in 1957, it certainly has similarities to Three Coins in the Fountain (1954), an American production about three American women who find love in Rome.

If anything, the fact that Souvenir d’Italie is by an Italian, bringing a rose-colored perspective to outsiders exploring his country, makes it an interesting oddity. Even the lightest of comedies and pink neorealism films of the era, made by Italians, didn’t typically get lost in the beauty of these locations, filming them like postcards, as the Hollywood productions did. 

Still, even if it isn’t narratively or thematically particularly complex, it’s a cozy, reassuring movie to lose oneself in, just as the three heroines do within the beauty of Italy. It’s like a 100-minute vacation, bringing visual pleasure through its locations and a breezy, romantic tone of possibility.