Italy on Film

Rome Adventure (1962). Campy fun! A young librarian (Suzanne Pleshette) longing for sexual freedom comes to Italy “where they know what love is all about.” She moves into a contessa’s palazzo, lands a job on her second day in an American bookstore on Piazza Navona, and must choose between Rossano Brazzi or Troy Donahue. Angie Dickinson as her nemesis, and Chad Everett as a dorky Etruscologist. (Above: Troy and Suzanne in front of the Duomo di Orvieto).

For many of us in the English-speaking world, our first impressions of Italy came from images projected onto the silver screen. Saturday afternoons in movie houses all over the world love affairs with Italy begin – capturing imaginations and inspiring future travel.

In the Beginning…

According to film aficionados, the golden age of Italian cinema began in the 1940s with the advent of the Italian Neorealism movement. Portrayals of gritty, post-war working-class Italian life gained worldwide popularity with masterpieces such as Roberto Rossolini’s trilogy Roma, citta’ aperta, Rome, Open City (1945), Vittorio De Sica’s Ladri di biciclette, The Bicycle Thieves (1948), and Federico Fellini’s La Strada (1954).

Ladri di Bicilette is the story of a father desperately searching post-war Rome for his stolen bicycle. If he’s unable to recover it, he will lose his job and the ability to support his family.

Hollywood on the Tiber

By the 1950s – a time of optimism and economic prosperity – an assortment of lighthearted, sugarcoated movies, filmed on location in Italy, made “love, Italian-style” all the rage. Most notable was William Wyler’s Roman Holiday (1953) starring Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck buzzing around Rome on a Vespa. It became an international phenomenon and its box office success was credited with the boom of tourism that Italy still enjoys today. Other fluffy, romantic films of the day include Three Coins in the Fountain (1954) and Rome Adventure (1962).

Roman Holiday. A handsome American journalist stumbles upon a princess incognito from her royal duties. In his attempt to trick her into an exclusive interview, they fall deeply in love.

Three Coins in the Fountain. “And in this eye-filling setting, the worldly-wicked, wonderful story of three American girls who toss three coins into the fountain as the Romans do, and fall head-over-heels in love, as women do.”

Fellini-isc: [Italian fel-lee-nee-isk] adjective, 1. To describe a particular style of movie making.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, director Federico Fellini’s presented to moviegoers a stranger side of Italian life. His style of filmmaking was filled with weirdly charming characters, off-centered observations with a circus-like quality that made the director’s work (i.e., La Strada (1954), La Dolce Vita (1960), and 8 ½ (1963), so unique and recognizable. To quote one of Fellini’s many admirers, “[His films] are one of the highest points of world cinema.”

La Dolce Vita (meaning “the sweet” or “the good life”) follows a gossip journalist (Marcello Mastroianni) over the span of 7 days as he reports on, and lives among, the idle rich and bourgeois of Rome. The film famously coined the phrase “paparazzo”.

8 ½. Some consider this story of an Italian filmmaker struggling with the creative process, autobiographical. As the protagonist attempts to deal with the pressures of his last directorial success, he finds the lines between the production and his personal life have blurred.

When Art Imitates Life…

Cinema Paradiso (1988). A successful filmmaker flashes back to his childhood in a little village in Sicily where he fell in love with the movies and formed a deep friendship with the theater’s projectionist.

Italy on film: May the love affair never end. What are your favorite films on Italy?