A Walk in the Clouds **** (1995, Keanu Reeves, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, Giancarlo Giannini, Anthony Quinn) – Classic Movie Review 7072

Director Alfonso Arau’s delicious and delightful 1995 full-on romantic drama A Walk in the Clouds stars Keanu Reeves, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, Giancarlo Giannini and Anthony Quinn. It tells a sweet story with charm to spare, is compellingly acted, and nicely directed – and looks ravishing.

Reeves plays Sergeant Paul Sutton, a young married US soldier returning home from World War Two who heads north to Sacramento in search of work and meets Victoria (Aitana Sánchez-Gijón), a beautiful young Mexican-American woman coming home from college to help with the grape harvest at her family vineyard in the Napa Valley.

He offers to stand in as her husband when he finds she is pregnant, abandoned by her boyfriend, so that she can face her traditionalist Old World domineering father Alberto (Giancarlo Giannini), who would disapprove of her out-of-wedlock pregnancy.

Alberto is infuriated anyway, that she has apparently married a man below her social standing and without his permission. Paul’s plan to go on with his journey, leaving her family to believe he has abandoned her, is derailed when Victoria’s grandfather Don Pedro (Anthony Quinn) persuades him to stay to help with the harvest. Of course Paul and Victoria start to fall in love with each other, but then he is still married.

A Walk in the Clouds is written by Robert Mark Kamen, Mark Miller, and Harvey Weitzman, based on director Alessandro Blasetti’s 1942 Italian film Four Steps in the Clouds [4 passi fra le nuvole], written by Piero Tellini, Cesare Zavattini, and Vittorio de Benedetti.

Also in the cast are Angélica Aragón as Maria Jose Aragon, Evangelina Elizondo as Guadalupe Aragon, Freddy Rodriguez as Pedro Aragon Jr, Debra Messing as Betty Sutton, Febronio Covarrubias as Jose Manuel, Roberto Huerta as Jose Luis, Juan Jiménez as Jose Marie, Ismael Gallegos as Jose’s musical son, Alejandra Flores as Consuelo, Gema Sandoval as Maria and Don Amendolia as Father Coturri.

Maurice Jarre won the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score.

It was shot among the wineries of Napa Valley and in the towns of Napa, St Helena, and Sonoma. The wine festival scene was staged in the large courtyard of Pasadena City Hall.

On a $20 million budget, it grossed $50 million in the United States.

A Walk in the Clouds is directed by Alfonso Arau, runs 102 minutes, is made by Zucker Brothers Productions, released by 20th Century Fox, written by Robert Mark Kamen, Mark Miller, and Harvey Weitzman, based on Four Steps in the Clouds by Piero Tellini, Cesare Zavattini, and Vittorio de Benedetti, produced by Gil Netter, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker, shot by Emmanuel Lubezki, and scored by Maurice Jarre.

In February 2017, Debra Messing claimed she was insulted by director Arau on the set of her first movie and said he suddenly put a nude scene into the film that was not part of the original script. In February 2018, Arau responded: ‘She’s following fashion now. Everybody is doing that. It’s absolutely wrong and nothing to do with reality. On the contrary, she owes me her career, because I picked her among many, many actresses. That was her first film.’

It has a PG certificate in the UK and an MPAA rating of PG-13 for moments of sensuality and war action.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7072

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com