Admirable film.

A Major Disappointment

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

"Boy on a Dolphin" looks fabulous. It was shot for the most part in the Greek Isles and if ever there was a film that did justice to Cinemascope it's this one. It has one of the most beautiful music scores for a film ever. It also has Clifton Webb, who like George Sanders could lift any movie he was in. And then it has 22-year-old Sophia Loren, also doing justice to the Cinemascope process in a wet, figure-clinging dress - diving into the sea, swimming under the sea and climbing out of the sea - the Production Code people back in Hollywood must have been on holidays when that footage came up for review. It stars Alan Ladd. This was toward the end of his career, but we saw a lot of him in the 1950's. He has an easy assurance here although it's sad watching him knowing that he was gone a few years later aged only 50. Sophia Loren plays Phaedra who dives for sponges off her loser boyfriend's boat. When she discovers an ancient statue she tries to change their fortunes by selling it to a ruthless collector of antiquities, Victor Parmelee (Clifton Webb). However an honest American archaeologist Dr. James Calder (Alan Ladd) steps between Phaedra and Parmelee and also between Phaedra and her boyfriend.This was Sophia's first movie in English and she plays the whole thing in a fairly shrill manner, she is much better when she is diving into, swimming under or climbing out of the sea etc. However, it's hard to take your eyes off her. I first saw this film back in 1957 at age 10, an era when the thought of sex education made everyone feel uncomfortable, but I'm sure Sophia in this film helped set my gender preferences for the future. The music was by Hugo Friedhofer, and orchestral colour was his forte (he had orchestrated for Steiner and Korngold). He was brilliant at incorporating folk music and instruments into his symphonic scores. Here he infused his score with Greek music and gave the whole thing an ethereal quality - just listen to the music that accompanies Parmelee on the road to the Metoria Monastery.Watching "Boy on a Dolphin" is always a happy experience for me, nostalgia plays a part of course, but then again, what's not to like?

An average adventure film, it is easy to say what is good about BOY ON A DOLPHIN: the scenery of Greece is wonderful, the music and dance numbers interesting (the first Greek dances I suspect in a major production film prior to NEVER ON Sunday), and the pleasures of looking at the young, vibrant Sophia Loren. They are sufficient to make the film a "5" out of "10". Dragging it down a bit is casting Alan Ladd as the hero archaeologist - he speaks his lines okay, but he was beginning to look a little puffy in the face (it is not the Ladd of THIS GUN FOR HIRE or TWO YEARS BEFORE THE MAST or THE BLUE DAHLIA). But pushing it up to a "7" is Clifton Webb. More about that later.Sophia is a sponge diver, and has accidentally located the wreckage of a 2,000 year old wreck which entered myth because it had a the statue of a boy (made out of solid gold) on top of a bronze dolphin. Ladd is approached by Sophia about showing him the treasure for possible financial reward. But Ladd's resources are small (he works for various antiquities organizations and national governments, and worked after World War II returning antiquities looted by the Nazis). He arranges to have lunch with her, but she arrives first. She is told they cannot serve her alone, so she plops herself down next to the next available person. It's Webb, who turns out to find her more interesting than initially when she mentions knowing Ladd and awaiting him. Webb cleverly spirits her out of the restaurant onto his yacht. There (keeping her a well treated prisoner) he does a little research on his own, and catches up with Ladd in a Monastic Library. He returns to the yacht. He explains the situation - he will pay much more money for the statue of the boy on the dolphin than Ladd will. Loren agrees to help him.So the situation is set up, with Loren working to delay and defeat Ladd's urge to find the statue, and once he goes she'll lead Webb to it. But due to unforeseen side issues (Ladd becomes friendly with Loren's kid brother Piero Giagnoni) he learns that she visits the yacht, and soon is aware he cannot depend on her anymore. But Loren is also finding she is falling for Ladd, and this is beginning to worry not only Webb but Loren's old boyfriend Jorge Mistral. Switching to relying on Mistral, Webb prepares to snatch the prize while Ladd is preoccupied. And there I will leave the plot.After LAURA and THE DARK CORNER, with the possible exception of his ridiculous social snob Eliot Templeton in THE RAZOR'S EDGE, Clifton Webb played good guys. Usually they were acerbic, like his Lynn Belvedere, but usually had his heart in the right place. His Richard Sturgis in TITANIC is confronting his wife Barbara Stanwyck, but is in for a severe emotional drubbing from her regarding his son's parentage before he pulls himself together and shows he is heroic at the conclusion. Most of his films were comedies, though TITANIC and CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN end with his death. However, it is not until he made BOY ON A DOLPHIN that Webb returned to his special brand of sybaritic style villainy. His Mr. Victor Parmelee (as noted on this thread, Webb's real last name was Parmelee) is a wealthy aesthete who collects art objects, and doesn't care how he gets them. He would have been the sort who would have dealt with Mr. Cathcart in THE DARK CORNER, and read Waldo Lydecker's columns in the newspapers. Webb has the aesthete down pat, and in the end you admire his thorough planning and stick-to-it-ness in seeking to circumvent Ladd. But he has one thing going in this film not found in the earlier two melodramas. Nobody is killed in BOY ON A DOLPHIN, although one suspects that the jealous Mistral would love to do in Ladd. So at the end Mr. Parmalee shrugs his shoulders and orders his yacht to Monte Carlo...ho hum...an occasional failure is to be expected. But he was not arrested (they found nothing to arrest him for), and a trip to Monte Carlo is certainly a better fate at the end of a film than being blasted by police bullets in your female friend's apartment or being shot in the back by your infuriated wife in the basement of your antique shop.

... but I can't tell if it is or not because it isn't captioned. Please someone, caption this movie. I do appreciate that someone listened to my plea regarding another movie and 6 months later it was captioned.We hearing impaired people love movies, too. I especially admire Sophia Loren. She is so beautiful and sophisticated. I even read her beauty book years ago. If you want to know what it's like for us, watch the movie with the sound off. Even hearing people have grown to enjoy Closed Captioning for times when someone is making noise and they can't hear the TV.Thanks for reading this. Now I pray next time I see it on TCM it will be captioned.-Youseineko-

Enjoyed this 1957 film dealing with a sunken treasure and all kinds of people trying to locate the item and hid it at the same time from everyone else involved. This film was a big hit with Sophia Loren,"Firepower",'79, who was very young and attractive and gave an outstanding performance. Alan Ladd, (Dr. James Calder),"Two Years Before The Mast",'46, was playing the game of trying to find the treasure also, however, he became romantically involved with Sphia Loren who was very much younger than he was. Clifton Web, "Satan Never Sleeps",'62, gave a great supporting role as a rich painter and yacht owner. Enjoyable film to view, especially when two great film stars were starring together.