The Glass Mountain

An aspiring composer, in the British Air Force for WWII, is downed in Italy and rescued by an Italian girl. He returns home to his wife, inspired to write an opera and aware that he's fallen in love with his rescuer.

This is really all about the magnificent score from Nino Rota - I remember my mum had it on an LP (sorry if you have to google that) and alongside "the Warsaw Concerto" was regularly heard emanating from our old record player. The story itself is a gentle romance with real-life couple Michael Denison, a would-be composer who joins the RAF in WWII and Dulcie Gray. He is shot down over Italy where he spends much of the rest of the conflict and gradually falls in love with a gorgeous Valentina Cortese. Once the war is over, he is repatriated and finds success with his music but can't quite reconcile his conflicted love life. It's a lovely little story, tinged with tragedy, done on a shoestring budget with some pretty scenic photography. It runs a bit too much to language at times and it could lose 20 minutes, I felt, but very much emblematic of British sentiment immediately after the end of the war.