A Walk in the Clouds Plot

A Walk in the Clouds is a 1995 romance film directed by Alfonso Arau and produced by the Zucker brothers; it is a remake of a 1942 Italian film of the same title. It stars Keanu Reeves, Giancarlo Giannini, Anthony Quinn and Aitana Sánchez-Gijón. The original music score for the film is composed by Maurice Jarre. The film's tagline is A man in search. A woman in need. A story of fate.

The film is set in 1945, when Paul Sutton, a World War II veteran returns home to his wife Betty (Debra Messing) whom he married the day before he left. He comes home with all these dreams and hopes, one being to quit his former job. His wife has different plans and sends him off to his former job as a door to door candy salesman, during his trip he accidentally meets Victoria Aragon, a Stanford student who belongs to a Mexican-descent family which owns a vineyard in Napa Valley, California. As she is pregnant by her professor, Paul offers to introduce himself to the very traditionalist family – especially her raging father Alberto – and leave the day after. Instead, he stays one more day – supposedly for the grape harvest – and more, until they eventually fall in love. [Evangelina Elizondo], plays The grand mother, in charge of the annual foot grape squeeze, always busy running the household's kitchen and help.

A Walk In The Clouds is a remake of a 1942 Italian film by Alessandro Blasetti, starring Gino Cervi and Adriana Benetti as the male and female leads. The original title was Quattro Passi Fra Le Nuvole (literally, "four steps in the clouds"), which has the same meaning as the title of the 1995 American remake; bizarrely, when the latter was distributed in Italy, a completely changed title was chosen for it (Il Profumo del Mosto Selvatico, "The Smell of Wild Must").

The original film was set somewhere in rural central Italy, and makes no mention of either World War II (which was still raging at that time) or of the wineyard subplot. While the basic premises of the film stay the same, the ending is completely different. The male protagonist never falls in love with the pregnant girl. Once the girl's unmarried state is revealed, unknown to her, the male protagonist begs the father to accept her back anyway, stressing how doing otherwise would forever poison his family life, and how happiness in family matters is too great a blessing to be thrown away. The father is ultimately convinced, and when the girls finds the two talking, he pretends he never learned of his daughter's ruse and that he is still convinced the two are a married couple. At that point, the male protagonist can finally leave for his city, returning to his unloving wife and spoiled kids, and tragically understands how very far from happy his own family life is and will be.