Hal Pereira, Roland Anderson, Samuel M. Comer and Arrigo Breschi were nominated for an Oscar for its art direction The film was released by Paramount Pictures on August 7, 1960.
In Naples, Michael discovers that his brother had a son, eight-year-old Nando, who is being cared for by his maternal aunt Lucia, a cabaret singer.
Loren performs a tongue-in-cheek musical number, "Tu vuò fà l'americano" ("You Want to Play American"), written by famed Neapolitan composer Renato Carosone.
[5] French newspaper Le Monde wrote that It Started in Naples, "even more than the world of comics, evokes that of the easy picturesque postcards in favor of foreign tourists.
This film, imbued with a sentimentality of charming songs, is helmed by an American, Melville Shavelson, who has hired, no doubt for the purposes of the co-production, Sophia Loren and Clark Gable.
Clark Gable bears his role with despondency, and over his marked face passes a kind of weary tension, as if it already foreshadows the illness that would suddenly take him away."
[7] German film magazine Cinema thought it was "gorgeous how the fiery Loren is allowed to sing, dance and above all rant wildly to her heart's content", while saying that the romance portrayed between her and Clark Gable is convincing "but at most is on paper.