I've just caught this on Talking Pictures TV. I only tuned in because Montgomery Clift was in it. By the end I was pleading with Jennifer Jones to get on the train and stay there. The whole thing drags along at a snail's pace (snails probably move faster). As I watched, my mind just kept wandering due to its self absorbed and phoney plot. I kept waiting for something to happen and when it did, it just came across as looking ridiculous and over the top. There's a scene with a pregnant woman with some children which is completely irrelevant and serves no purpose, although the child actors were engaging, which is more than can be said for the key players. Clift's face throughout failed to alter, I can only describe the expression as requiring laxatives. I've never been so pleased for someone to get on a train. Overplayed, overacted and thank goodness just over.

This is really a brief encounter in every sense of the word. The film is just 64 minutes long and recounts an older, almost frumpy looking Jennifer Jones attempting to break off a romance with an Italian played by Montgomery Clift. Clift just will not say no causing Jones to miss her train and the film is devoted to their adventures before the next train comes.Clift gave her quite a slap when she says she must go. Note a young child, Dickie Beymer, who later made a career for himself as Richard.To depict kindness, Jones helps out a couple with three children, expecting a 4th, when the woman becomes ill at the station. There is mention of Jones's husband and 7 year old daughter in Philadelphia.Arrested for kissing? That's exactly what happens and luckily for both, an understanding magistrate prevents them from being hauled off to court. Perhaps, the film would have been better had this been a comedy. The dramatic overtones really don't work given the confines of time.

A very intense love story with two yearning characters. JENNIFER JONES is absolutely gorgeous as a straight laced and noble American woman who enters into an affair with an Italian man (played by MONTGOMERY CLIFT). The film takes place entirely at a train station with the two lovers going back and forth in their commitment towards each other even as they stave off red tape.The love story is interspersed with slice of life scenes at the station. - both comedic and heart breaking. I think the film would have been better in the hands of a more conventional American filmmaker. But even then, a really nice watch mainly due to some intense acting and the chemistry between the two leads.

This film is full of ironical metaphors. We have a running Joseph and Mary / Adam and Eve biblical subtext. The surface sentimentality can be misleading. Rome Termini Station contains enough iconography of Heaven and Hell to make up an ironic parable. I'm surprised that so many critics have not picked up the clever gags. I suspect that the butchering of the film down to 63 minutes has something to do with it. The serpent and the apple, seeking refuge in the manger, Dante's innocent descending into the purgatory of the police station, two passionate innocents caught up in orthodox role structure, it's all there, if rather clumsily re-edited. The film clearly belongs to an era where film language a la Welles or Hitchcock was more sophisticated than much of today's mainstream cinema.