Independent Films, Film Profiles

A Walk in the Clouds
by Alfonso Arau

A Walk in the Clouds is a 1995 American romantic drama film directed by Alfonso Arau. The screenplay by Robert Mark Kamen, Mark Miller, and Harvey Weitzman is based on the 1942 Italian film Quattro Passi Fra Le Nuvole by Piero Tellini, Cesare Zavattini, and Vittorio de Benedetti. It was filmed in brown muted sepia tones, reminiscent of old pictures.Shortly after the surrender of Japan, marking the end of World War II, United States Army Sgt. Paul Sutton returns to San Francisco to reunite with his wife Betty, whom he married - following a whirlwind courtship - the day before he departed for the Pacific. The war has left him with emotional scars, and he experiences flashbacks on a regular basis.Paul's reunion with Betty is strained, especially after he discovers most of the letters he wrote her were set aside unopened. He is determined to make a go of the marriage however, and hopes to establish a new career for himself. Betty insists he continue to sell candy door-to-door, and he sets off to Sacramento. En route, he meets fellow bus passenger Victoria Aragon, a Stanford University graduate student whose Mexican-American family owns a vineyard in the Napa Valley. When he learns the unmarried woman is pregnant by her professor, Paul offers to introduce himself to her very traditionalist family as her husband.Victoria's father is infuriated, not only that she married a man below her social standing, but without his permission as well. Paul's initial plan to quietly slip away and continue on his journey, leaving Victoria's family to believe he abandoned her, is derailed when her grandfather Don Pedro encourages him to stay and help with the harvest. Paul and Victoria try to ignore their growing attraction for each other. His desire to salvage his marriage prompts him to return home, where he discovers his wife is involved with another man. She has applied for an annulment, to which he readily agrees, and he returns to the Aragon estate to ask Victoria to marry him. An argument with her father leads to a disastrous fire which destroys the vineyard, but the family is certain it will recover from its loss with the help of its newest member.