Italy on Page & Screen - Italy - page 1840

an amateur detective. Equally contemporary is Ferzan Özpetek's Mine vaganti (Loose
Cannons; 2010), a situation comedy about two gay brothers and their conservative
Pugliese family.
A one-man 'Abbott and Costello', Antonio de Curtis (1898-1967), aka Totò, famously depicted
the Neapolitan furbizia (cunning). Appearing in over 100 films, including Miseria e nobilità (Misery &
Nobility; 1954), his roles as a hustler living on nothing but his quick wits have guaranteed him
cult status in Naples.
Spaghetti Westerns
Emerging in the mid-1960s, Italian-style Westerns had no shortage of high-noon show-
downs featuring flinty characters and Ennio Morricone's terminally catchy whistled tunes
( doodle-oodle-ooh, wah wah wah …). Top of the directorial heap was Sergio Leone,
whose Western debut Per un pugno di dollari (A Fistful of Dollars; 1964) helped launch a
young Clint Eastwood's movie career. After Leone and Clintwood teamed up again in Il
buono, il brutto, il cattivo (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly; 1966), it was Henry Fonda's
turn in Leone's C'era una volta il West (Once Upon a Time in the West; 1968), a story
about a revenge-seeking widow.
LOCATION! LOCATION!
Italy's cities, hills and coastlines set the scene for countless celluloid classics. Top billing goes to
Rome, where Bernardo Bertolucci used the Terme di Caracalla in the oedipal La luna (1979), Gregory
Peck gave Audrey Hepburn a fright at the Bocca della Verità in William Wyler's Roman Holiday
(1953) and Anita Ekberg cooled off in the Trevi Fountain in Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita .
Fellini's love affair with the Eternal City culminated in his silver-screen tribute, Roma (1972), while
American director Woody Allen showed his affection with the romantic comedy, To Rome with Love
(2012).
Florence's Piazza della Signoria recalls James Ivory's Room With a View (1985). Further south, Si-
ena's Piazza del Palio and Piazza della Paglietta stir fantasies of actor Daniel Craig - both featured in
the 22nd James Bond instalment, Quantum of Solace (2008).
In Venice, Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp sped down the Grand Canal in The Tourist (2010). The
city enjoyed a cameo in The Talented Mr Ripley (1999), in which Matt Damon and Gwyneth Paltrow
also tanned and toasted on the islands of Procida and Ischia. Fans of Il Postino will recognise Pro-
cida's pastel-hued Corricella, while deep down in Basilicata, Matera's cavernous landscape moonlit as
Palestine in Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ (2004).