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Films
featuring Venice are not rare - James Bond, Indiana Jones, Nikita
and Lara Croft have all dropped in - but usually all you get is
some stock footage of The Grand Canal and St Mark's, followed by a
scene with someone advancing the plot on a Venetian-interior set.
The Fred Astaire musical Top Hat created Venice seemingly
out of sheets of white paper.
Period drama rather dominates and some nasty modern murders, well nasty
1970s murders mostly. There are also a fair few films that might
politely be classified as erotica,
and some pretty sloppy rom-coms.
Skimming through DVDs in search of screen captures it occurs to me
to ask the question: 'Is there even one film or TV series that
features Venice and doesn't have an establishing shot of
the Salute church?'
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Blame it on the bellboy
1991 The plot for this one revolves around some three-way mistaken identity involving a hit man out to murder a Mafia don, a lowly worm sent to buy a villa for his abusive boss, and a Lord Mayor out for some extra-marital hanky panky. Their names are confused by an h-dropping bellboy and much 'hilarity' ensues, like birds getting accidentally shot when the hit man is distracted and a fat man wanting to have sex with a skinny woman and getting stuck in revolving doors. The later on some briefcases get mixed up. Sigh! The actors aren't bad: Penelope Wilton, Bryan Brown, Richard Griffiths (Harry Potter's step-father) and Alison Steadman all do their best, and Dudley Moore does very little, in what was to be his last big-screen appearance. From the credit sequence this starts out looking like a slick travelogue, and sounding like a cheesy one - so that every time Patsy Kensit appears the music lapses into that sleazy sax playing that always used to signal 'sexy babe on screen', in case you wouldn't have noticed otherwise. But like a travel video it gives good Venice - and features one of my favourite Grand Canal-side palazzos in the plot (the Palazzetto Stern, pictured left). But apart from that it's really one of the worst most bone-headed comedy films you're ever likely to suffer. Blume in love 1973 Paul Mazursky George Segal plays a lawyer looking back on his failed marriage as he wanders around Piazza San Marco wearing a bad beard. This was reported to give good Venice and to be a quirky gem, but the reports lied. There's little Venice beyond the Piazza, and the film is pretty much your standard 70s sub-Woody Allen relationship movie. Promiscuity, talking mystical tosh, doing meditation, strumming folky music, visiting shrinks, eating humourous vegetarian food, spouting right-on politics...it ticks all the boxes, but it just ain't sharp or funny. Marsha Mason is the only person you don't want to slap, and then there's the ending! Spoiler warning. He wins his wife back from Kris Kristofferson by raping her, so she gets pregnant, and they have a romantic reunion, in Venice! A sick-making Hollywood ending, and a deeply dubious message. Bread and tulips Well here's something you don't see everyday - an Italian film featuring Venice. It's about a housewife on holiday who gets left behind when the coach carrying her family leaves without her. She decides to return home under her own steam, then she decides on a detour to Venice, then she decides to stay. She meets a waiter who speaks like a book and offers her a room in his flat. She gets a job with an anarchist florist, befriends a masseuse, and rediscovers the sensuality of the accordion. This is an odd film, with an Anne Tyler-type plot, low-key humour, and some dream sequences with more than a tinge of David Lynch about them. But it works, hangs together, involves you, and leaves you smiling; but not feeling manipulated. Venice is a lovely backdrop, without the kind of lingering and worshipful camerawork a non-Italian would indulge in. A rom-com maybe, but with reality and bite - I liked it a lot. Brideshead Revisited 1981 When Charles and Sebastian visit Venice their gondolas arrive at the Palazzo Contarini-Polignac, but once inside they are miraculously transported to the Palazzo Barbaro (before its recent clean) (see photo above right) and here they stay as guests of Sebastian's father, the interiors being filmed here, including the courtyard where they all have breakfast. There's a pre-cleaned grimy patina about most of the places they visit, in fact, in this lovingly-written and filmed episode. The book and the series contributed more than a little to my mental Venice before I got to see the real thing. The 2005 UK DVD reissue (with commentaries and a documentary) has better picture quality, evidently, than the set from a few years before which I bought, but is still not what you'd call sparkling or perfect, it seems. Brideshead Revisited 2008 By the time I got to see this on DVD my expectations had been made lower than low by the reviews and reports, and so I had little room for disappointment. It's like one of those cut-down versions of famous films done in five minutes with Lego or sock puppets. You wait for famous bits to happen and they all whizz past in imitation of the TV series. The only sustained pleasure and surprise comes courtesy of Emma Thompson who makes Lady Marchmain much nastier here, and her confrontations with Charles fairly fizz with animosity rather than the smiling bemusement of Claire Bloom in the TV Series. The Venice scenes zip by, with the requisite boat ride past loggias and churches and under bridges. Sebastian's father is staying in the Palazzo Contarini (with its garden entrance on the Grand Canal) this time, and rather than Bellini the talk is of Veronese and Canaletto for some bizarre reason. When the conversation turns (yet again) to Charles being an artist his Lordship's mistress (played by Greta Scacchi with an 'Italian' accent) promises to show him the works of these two artists; tricky in the case of Canaletto as his works were all shipped abroad almost as soon as the paint had dried. The actor playing Charles just plays Jeremy Irons playing Charles, the actor playing Sebastian has the ferrety face of a Cockney urchin and Julia fails to outshine either of them. The scene where Charles visits Sebastian in the Moroccan hospital is well handled and genuinely moving, and so a rarity. |
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Capriccio Veneziano
2002
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The comfort of strangers
1990
When I first saw this film I found it disturbing and confusing, like the book, and didn't like it. Seventeen years on I watched the DVD and liked it a lot more. It's still disturbing, if not quite as much as back then, and I still don't know what it's supposed to be about. Natasha Richardson and Rupert Everett play a callow and troubled couple on holiday in Venice, trying to fix and/or understand their relationship, who fall into the clutches of a psycho-couple played by Christopher Walken and Helen Mirren. There's much atmospheric photography of Venice, by day and by night, with repeated use of red-tinged mistiness at night, presumably suggestive of hell. All is real and recognisable Venice, except for the palazzo interior of the predatory couple's apartment, which looks like a stage set, maybe on purpose. So it gives good Venice, and has an effectively evoked sense of gathering threat, but it still confuses. I can see that there are post-80s themes of freedom/bondage and liberality/repression going on here, but the ending still does not bring comprehension. A dance to the music of time 1997 An excellent, if somewhat drastically shortened, BBC television adaptation of Anthony Powell's 12-novel sequence dealing with intersecting lives lived and dances danced through the major events of the last Century. It gets to Venice in the last of the four episodes. The Venice sequence, contained in the book Temporary Kings, is relatively lingered over and it's a good enough palazzo-fix, with an imitation Tiepolo ceiling plot-device telling the same story as Kristin Scott-Thomas did in The English Patient and reflecting the episode's concentration on voyeurism and weird sex generally. Along with much death and some masks this all goes toward making it a very Venetian experience. Now out on DVD in the UK . Dangerous beauty (aka The Honest Courtesan) Based on the true story of Veronica Franco, a woman of wit with few options open to her if she is to continue to develop her mind, and her relationship with Marco Venier, a member of a patrician family with a dynastic marriage planned for him. So her Mother trains her in the family trade of high-class courtesan, and she sets about bedding and besting the - universally handsome - men of Venice, and getting her poems published. Catherine McCormack impresses mightily as Veronica, the film holds the attention and Venice looks nicely like Venice. True the wider views all look faked - more like a painting on velvet than a Canaletto - and the canalside scenes seem have been filmed on one set. The plotting and dialogue have some mundane patches too, but overall it's an attractive and intelligent film featuring some nicely ambiguous sexual politics. The best scene has some important wives, who lack our heroine's access to the centre of things, summoning Veronica to tell them of the fate of their men in the war with the infidels. One of them angrily asks what she has that they don't, that their husbands are so smitten with her, and she demonstrates, with a little Latin and a wicked way with a banana. The film is based on the current standard work on Veronica Franco, by Margaret Rosenthal, who also wrote this page http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/efts/IWW/BIOS/A0017.html The Region 1 DVD has some notes on the cast and the story, and a very trailerish trailer. It is also rumoured to be a full screen print trimmed top and bottom to look like a wide screen version. Death in Venice Not a book I'd read, or a film I'd seen, before I bought the DVD. Dirk Bogarde plays a composer haunted by death and failure who comes to Venice to recover from an illness, only to find there's cholera on the wind. Staying at a hotel on the Lido he becomes obsessed by a pretty boy, with whom he is soon exchanging meaningful glances. The action, if pining and hesitating can be called action, takes place mostly on the Lido, so there's not much Venice flavour, indeed the camera seems mostly to wilfully exclude sweeping views and full-on glimpses, but what little there is tends to be ravishing or fragrant. The pace is stately, the hats are huge and the flashback arguments with Alfred about the nature of art and beauty are laughably overwrought. It's very much a film of its time and just about rewards your patience. The DVD extras include Visconti's Venice and Views of Venice, but these are an 8 minute contemporary location report and a sequence of black and white stills respectively. A bit of a con, in other words. |
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Vendetta 2000 This was the first in the series and is adapted from the novel A Venetian Reckoning (aka Death and Judgment). The plot involves the murder of a lawyer, people trafficking and snuff movies. To begin with the actor playing Brunetti (Joachim Król) seems a bit too cuddly, and he never really casts off this fluffy aura for me, although he does toughen up a bit towards the end. Overall the adaptation impressively retains the realism, not to say cynicism, of the novels. I found the rest of the cast convincing, but I didn't picture the fascinating Signorina Elettra as quite this young and attractive. The music grates a bit occasionally, overdoing the jaunty music when Brunetti's at home, for example, and the discordant chords when someone's unhappy answering a question, thereby rather over-emphasising the tension. There's a satisfying amount of real Venice on show, although the usual poetically-licensed leaping around Venice between cuts is not unusual. The Brunetti family home is authentically located very close to where they live in the books and so they eat on a large terrace on the corner of the Rio San Polo with a spectacular view across the Grand Canal. Also the ex-convent in front of San Francesco della Vigna stands in inauthentically as the police headquarters building (see right) which is actually opposite the church of San Lorenzo. Having so long looked forward to seeing one of these I was not disappointed, and have been left keenly anticipating the next one... |
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Venezianische Scharade (The Anonymous Venetian)
2000 The second adaptation again deals with a murder in Mestre, this time it's a transvestite found out back of an abattoir. Again it's a quality piece of work, reminiscent of the TV adaptations of the Inspector Morse stories with their subtlety and emotional depth. Brunetti differs from Morse in that his life is centred on his family, and that's well brought out here, with the scenes between Brunetti and his wife serving to do more than just précis plot developments. I still found the music intrusive at times, and there's lots of Venice and lots of liberties with location again too. A swoop on a flat said to be in San Barnaba sees the police launches heading away from the vicinity of Rio San Barnaba and heading towards the North side of the Accademia Bridge and ending up in a block of apartments just off the Strada Nova near the railway station! Also everyone's home and office, no matter where it's positioned, has a grand sweeping view of the Grand Canal. And as for the Brunetti's plush flat and its modest little terrace...(see left). |
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In Sachen Signora Brunetti (The Case of Signora Brunetti) 2002 The third adaptation jumps forward a few novels, being based on the book Fatal Remedies. This is the one where Paola, Brunetti's wife, chucks a rock through a travel agent's window to protest his involvement in sex tourism and the encouragement of child prostitution. The plot develops into murder and associated nastiness involving the murder-victim's pharmaceutical factory. So more filming in Mestre, as the Venetian islands tend not to have many factory complexes. In Venice the travel agent's premises are in the campo in front of San Nicolo da Tolentino and the church's portico shelters Brunetti and Paola whilst they have a heated discussion following the discovery of the murder victim. The Palazzo Molin (the one with the garden, opposite the Palazzo Barbaro) is used as the home of the victim, and his wife (right). It seems to me that there are no wrong feet placed anywhere here - even the music behaves itself and settles into suitability this time, so I have no grounds for quibbles. Except...I'm still worried by the plushness of the Brunettis' apartment. Could a Commissario and a teacher really afford to live somewhere this grand, overlooking the Grand Canal? |
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Nobiltà (Nobility) 2002 This is the last episode with cuddly Joachim Król as Brunetti (pictured on the right in the picture left) and is based on the novel A noble radiance. It begins with a discovery of bones which reopens an old kidnapping case. The wealthy family involved turn out to have plenty of skeletons too, and things get messy, of course. Emotions are stirred up, and the acting gets more intense, in the Brunetti family too, as Guido's father-in-law accuses him neglecting Paola. A bit more variety of emotion for the actors playing Brunetti and Paola to get their teeth into, as I say, just before they get the sack. Plenty of Venice, as usual, but nothing special to report on as far as locations or location-gaffs are concerned. Still good stuff though. |
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Venezianisches Finale (Venetian finale) 2003 New season, new actor playing Brunetti - Uwe Kockisch (right). There's a new actress playing his wife too, which is just as well as it would have felt like adultery; but she's not as immediately convincing as the previous Paola. For the story we jump right back in the novel sequence to Death at La Fenice, the very first Brunetti novel. A famous conductor is murdered mid-performance at the Fenice opera house and Brunetti is then pushed relentlessly by Patta due to the height of the case's profile. There's a lesbian element and some accusations of child abuse in a plot which has the quiet subtlety and inter-plot echoes of Ms Leon's maturer stuff. The new Brunettis were a bit of a shock, but leaving just a day between watching this and the previous episode made matters more disturbing than would have been the case with the real gap of a year between seasons. We'll see. The other actors are all the same as previously. Location wise the highlights are the shiny palazzo interiors this time, with a squalid 'real' interior and the home of someone who's merely very wealthy on view too. |
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Endstation Venedig 2006 We here leap forward from Season 3 to Season 6 and the passing of three years show a certain slickness creeping in, with a tendency towards gratuitous misty and touristy sunrises and sunsets bracketing each day's action. In the novel sequence we're back to the second Brunetti novel Death in a Strange Country. It's the one with the dead American soldier and the rich crook friend of Brunetti's rich father-in-law and his shady toxic waste business. Although one doubts he's as smart as he makes out if he dumps the barrels of nasty stuff but doesn't bother to paint out the words 'US Army' stencilled on the side. Having American characters only adds to the weird language and translation decisions and dislocations. Having German-speaking Italian characters is odd enough, but when the characters switch between Italian greetings and colloquialisms and German ones and, as here, you get 'American' soldiers speaking English with a German accent the mind becomes truly mangled. Geography gets a bit mangled too with a meeting 'in front of the Arsenale' actually taking place behind the Scuola di San Rocco. Also when Signorina Elettra goes to sit on the balustrade outside her office (see left) the canal outside switches from the usually-viewed stretch of Grand Canal to a side canal. This seems to be the Fondamenta di Soccorso, as the series also uses the Palazzo Zenobio androne for some interiors of the questura. But the nasty industrialist's palazzo (Loredan) is consistently dealt with, having all approaches, departures and views matching up with reality. The plot is played fast-and-loose with, though, acquiring a dramatic chase across rooftops, for example, and an un-Leonishly neat surprise resolution. There's also a 'humourous' subplot involving Brunetti's son Raffi setting himself up in business selling some umbrellas with pink elephants on that his grandmother has inherited. I don't remember this from the book, and it's not what you'd call a clever reflection of the main plot. So, slicker this time, as I say, but still satisfying entertainment. |
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Verschwiegene Kanäle (Concealed Canals) 2005 And now we hop back to Season 5. This one is based on the novel Uniform Justice which dealt with a 'suicide' at a military academy. The episode moves the action to the naval school in the Arsenale and so we get some authentic peeks into the Arsenale complex. (But the interior dormitory corridor was actually filmed in the San Giorgio Maggiore complex.) We also get a plot mixing homophobia and high-level corruption, with another unremembered subplot, but this time it does echo the main plot, being to do with Raffi shadowing his father at work and so adding a bit of extra depth to the underlying theme of father-son relationships. The other sub-sub-plot, involving Vianello's plans for a museum of Venetian crime, makes somewhat less sense. Another negative is that the military bullying being conducted mostly in shouted German makes for some unfortunate Nazi overtones, but that's probably due to my Brit background watching old war films on TV as a child. As this is my last one to watch I'll sum up by saying that these episodes have all been eminently watchable and enjoyable, with good location content and not too many liberties taken. Although on the picky location-mangling front, this one does have the Brunetti's entering their flat's front door up in Cannaregio, when it's aforementioned grand terrace overlooks the Grand Canal near San Polo far to the South East. |
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Don't look now Dark Venice comes convincingly to the screen. A film full of 70s spookiness and sex, it keeps you disturbed and unsettled from beginning to end. This is set in the real and cold out-of-season Venice, rather than the warm and glowing high-season version, with plenty of torn posters and rubbish sacks. Also good for scenes of Venice by night. The famous love scene was filmed in the Hotel Bauer Grünwald and the film loses its heart without it, as was proven by the version the BBC broadcast years ago with the scene cut out. This is not just one of the best films made in Venice, it's a great film made in Venice. The church which Donald Sutherland is restoring is San Nicolo dei Mendicoli in Dorsoduro, out by the docks, which actually was being restored at the time of filming. Emmanuelle in Venice 1993 Features Marcella Walerstein as young Emmanuelle, with one-time-Bond George Lazenby, and the original Emmanuelle Sylvia Kristel as Old Emmanuelle, which suggests a very Venetian theme of aging and decay. Well no, it's actually about old Emmanuelle flashing back, as it were, to when she helped a young widow overcome her misery and her mother-in-law. She does this using her special mystic-sexual powers granted her, so that she just has to touch a charmed liquid to the cleft between her naked breasts, which results in lightening striking, and the widow goes all peculiar and immediately becomes a better and sexier person. She shows this by stopping whipping her maid and instead teaching her the ways of lesbian sex, and then taking her to Paris to go shopping and eat ice cream. I know - she lives in Venice and goes to Paris for ice cream! How believable is that?! This is probably as far as I'm going to go in my dedication to watching all the Venice-set films I can get my hands on. It was very cheap, but still. The Venice exteriors are pretty much stock shots taken from boats on canals and the interiors are semi-convincing sets. But Venice is just a source of bits of business to intersperse between the tedious plot and the soft-core porn, of course, which is pretty much your standard dry, panting stuff. The only joy being admiring quaint details like, for example, some frantic copulation featuring a chap still visibly wearing his underpants. Clever. Les enfants du siècle (Children of the Century) 1999 Diane Kurys A film about the French writer George Sand's relationship with Alfred de Musset which was, as the DVD box tells us, 'terribly tempestuous and passionate'. Juliette Binoche plays Sand and Benoit Magimel plays de Musset like a French Sean Penn. It's an admirable, if not lovable, film - a bit long at 137 minutes, with the 20 minutes of additional footage, as the box tells us, making it up to the original French theatrical length. The story, of a strong woman's devotion to an unworthy wastrel, is not particularly original but is done well enough. The middle 40 minutes gives good Venice, though. Some odd angles are used, presumably to exclude vaporetti and intrusive modern details, but this film does a fine job of conjuring up Austrian-occupied Venice, with its covered-in gondolas and infestation of uniforms. And evidently the rooms in the Danieli where the couple stayed are the ones used in the film. Eve Joseph Losey Misery and misanthropy from Joseph Losey as Stanley Baker plays an arrogant working class Welsh lad made good (of course, this film was made in the 60's) whose first novel gets made into a film, which puts him in a black and white Venice for the film festival. He stays on and buys a house on Torcello, which is invaded one wet night by tart-with-no-heart Jeanne Moreau. His obsession with her threatens his relationship with his film's director's assistant, amidst recriminations, revelations and, yes, a gondola funeral. A dated film, to be sure, in its self-conscious 'European' artiness, jazzy soundtrack and rather obvious imagery. But Venice looks fine in the winter and the story, from a James Hadley Chase novel, keeps you interested, just about. Everyone says I love you 1996 Woody Allen You need to be able to cope with the whole musicals suspension-of-disbelief thing to appreciate this one. Also the way that Woody's blotted his copybook in recent years - personally and professionally - has to not affect you. And the fact that his whole shtick was starting to wear a bit thin at this stage. But apart from that...it's still not a very good film. The plot concerns a family of rich New Yorkers and their various interconnected love-life difficulties. Julia Roberts and Goldie Hawn acquit themselves fine, but the dialogue and the musical numbers just lack much conviction and any spark. Thirty minutes in there's a fifteen-minute Venice episode, which is why I'm writing this of course. Julia R. jogs around Dorsoduro and through Campo Santo Stefano, meeting Woody in Campiello Barbaro (see right). There's some fish market action, and a hotel terrace opposite the Salute. Tintoretto is a plot device, as is a visit to the San Rocco Scuola, and then it's back to New York. Not a long Venice fix, not a good film. A few days in September 2007 A CIA agent (Nick Nolte) has knowledge of impending terrorist attacks and so needs to get his daughter, his son, and a French woman he once worked with (Juliette Binoche) to meet him in Venice. They are pursued by a 'poetic psycho' played by John Turturro. They all meet up on September 11th 2001. The reviews weren't great, and so my expectations were modest, but this wasn't as bad as I'd dreaded, just not as good as it thinks it is. The dialogue is quite sharp, the photography too tricksy, and the performances mixed. Juliette B has fun playing the ex-foxy agent whose best pals are her gun and her tortoise, but Turturro's bonkers psycho, who kills indiscriminately and then rings his shrink on his mobile, is more than a little unoriginal. Overall the film's plotting is just not that fresh. The last hour is all set in Venice, though, and the setting is dealt with in an unshowy and 'real' way. No Salute shots, no scenes in San Marco, just recognisable and evocative wanderings and views. And what did happen to the tortoise?
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The honey pot 1967 (aka Mr Fox of Venice) Rex Harrison plays millionaire Cecil Fox, who goes to see a performance of Ben Johnson's Volpone at the Fenice and gets an idea. He writes to three of his ex-mistresses telling them that he's dying, and invites them to his palazzo in Venice with the promise of inheriting his wealth. This is quite a clever, but wordy, film with lots of long stretches of dialogue in rooms betraying its theatrical derivation. The rooms and garden are obvious sets but there is some location filming. The approach to the Palazzo van Axel, near the Miracoli church, is made to look like a private calle with the addition of a couple of dozing gilt lions and some plants (see left). There's some walking around at night, taking of tea in one of the San Marco cafes, and gondola-taking too, in a wet winter in Venice. Nice to see Maggie Smith in an early and vaguely sexy role too. An enjoyable film then, with a satisfyingly twisty plot, and with time and deception featuring as two meaty and Venetian plot concerns. At one stage this was going to be called Anyone for Venice? No, really. Identificazione di una donna 1982 Antonioni (aka Indentification of a woman) In love and war 1996 Richard Attenborough The adventures of the young Ernest Hemingway (played by Chris O'Donnell) in Italy during WWI leave him injured and put him in a nearby hospital run by American volunteer nurses. A still on the imdb features his nurse/love-interest Sandra Bullock posing on the Palazzo Barbaro balcony just like the lads in the Brideshead still above, but it's deceptive, as there's very little Venice here - about three scenes taking up less than a minute. It's an old-fashioned film heavy on horrors-of-war and with no small amount of gore, but the uniforms and laundry are mostly kept spotless and the emotions rarely other than black-and-white. In memory of me
(In memoria di me) 2007 |
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The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen 2003 In which various characters from fantastic Victorian fiction do battle with unspeakable evil. The first of the film's fiendish plots involves the destruction of Venice, achieved by placing bombs in the looming and ornate catacombs beneath the city. These catacombs don't exist of course, and so neither do Leonardo's drawings of them, obviously. Other liberties taken with Venetian reality are the bridges over the canals being four stories up, to facilitate the passing of huge baroque-detailed submarines (left), and the car-wide streets of Venice to facilitate car chases involving a large matching baroquely-detailed car. Despite these inventions it's all handsomely done and this adaptation of a smart graphic novel is not half as disappointing as reported. A little romance 1979 George Roy Hill The Lost Moment 1947 A somewhat loose adaptation of Henry James' The Aspern Papers, I missed this on TV recently but it's supposed to be a pleasingly gothic little number set in a somewhat cardboard Venice. Lovejoy - Death and Venice 1986 I'll admit I didn't watch any of this TV series at the time: it, and Ian McShane its star, just never appealed. But I may have to admit, 20-odd years on, that I made a mistake. On the strength of this two-part story from series 1 it seems to have been pretty sharply written and humourous in an appealingly low-key way. Also, spookily, the first episode of this pair was first aired one day after my birthday in 1986. It sees shady antiques dealer Lovejoy getting mixed up in a cartel of greedy rich bastards and their plan to own Venice, one artwork at a time. It gives great Venice, albeit with 1980s low-res 4:3 VT quality. There's a lot of filming around Campo Sant'Angelo and a scene in front of the Misericordia church, another of my favourite spots. Unusual care is taken to be geographically accurate - once established the palazzo of the baddies stays where it is, for example, no matter how and when it's approached. There's also Haydn Gwynne, appearing in her first TV role, as a sexy Italian tour guide. The fashions and attitudes are very 80s, and there are a few dated and trite touches, but this is overall superior stuff and very much a Venetian treat. The series was adapted from the original novels written by Jonathan Gash, with these episodes taken from one called The gondola scam. The Merchant of Venice 2004 Some nice misty Venetian exteriors, but the interiors are somewhat unconvincing with their preponderance of pale frescoes, which just aren't possible in the dampness of Venice's atmosphere. Handsome values overall, though, despite the inauthentic decor - filmed in Luxembourg to save money - and nicely acted. I've never seen or studied the play, so I found Shylock's status as an oppressed victim of prejudice and his eventual humiliation a little confusing. Monday Morning 2002 A film which concentrates on life's rich tapestry rolling by, rather than any kind of strong plot, so you get a film full eccentric characters and droll situations. Such relentless oddity could wear thin, but the depth of the humanity provides firm balance. It's all about a factory worker and family man who one Monday morning decides to bunk off work, go see his dad, and then go see some of the world. His first destination is Venice, where he makes good friends, gets his pockets picked and has some feckless fun. There's some good and real use of Venice, mostly along sunny canals, but also around La Maddalena church. And there's a scene filmed on a rooftop behind San Zaccaria, with vistas to take your breath away. There's also gentle humour, realistic humanity, and a recurring motif of people seen through windows.
Monster of Venice
(aka: Embalmer) 1966 |
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Senso (aka Livia) 1954 This is an earlier Venice-set film from Luchino Visconti, the director of Death in Venice, but it's not a patch on The Leopard. It's set in the final days of the Austrian occupation and tells the pretty predictable tale of a contessa's doomed infatuation with an Austrian soldier. Farley Grainger makes a good handsome heartless bastard, but is ill-served by bad dubbing. Alida Valli shines as the Contessa. There's a mess of heaving bosoms and breathlessness behind veils, with plenty of trousers with stripes up the legs. You get the picture? There's also some good Venice in the first half hour, and the photography is generally pretty special. The film opens with a performance at La Fenice and following the most recent fire enlarged stills from this sequence were used in the restoration. Much footage was cut from the final battle scenes, it is said, by the Italian government to blunt its criticism of the feebleness of the ruling class's commitment to the Italian cause at the time. Released on DVD in the UK in July 2007, but clocking in at 116 minutes it's not the rumoured restored version. Senso '45 (aka Black Angel) 2002 This comes courtesy of Tinto Brass, the director of Caligula, so you'd expect soft-core porn with a thin veneer of European 'respectability'. What you'd not expect is for the Italian arts ministry to consider it 'culturally significant' enough to put 1.6 million Euros into it. The film is truly tosh, and not even that sexy. Based on the same novel by Camillo Boito as Senso above, but this time the setting is shifted to the last days of the Nazi occupation. The Siege of Venice (Caccia alla Vedova) 1991 A Russian film in which Isabella Rossellini plays a woman widowed on her wedding day who thereby becomes very wealthy and so is plagued by suitors, and the Republic of Venice who fear that her money will go abroad if she marries a foreigner. It's based on a Goldoni play called The Sly Widow and it's pretty broad unsubtle stuff. I laughed maybe three times. It features Tom Conti with an accent and performance seemingly based on Manuel in Fawlty Towers, and James Wilby as a cold Englishman. What it doesn't feature is Venice, as this was all filmed on sets in Moscow. But it's short and it looks good. The story of us 1999 Rob Reiner Bruce Willis and Michelle Pfeiffer play a couple whose relationship has hit rocks. A picturesque trip to Venice is used as a (desperate?) plot device. A reviewer on Amazon describes this as both shallow and moving, which is intriguing if not very encouraging. Summertime 1955 David Lean made this film, known in the UK as Summer Madness, two years before he made Bridge on the River Kwai. It stars Katharine Hepburn as an American virgin doing Europe and getting a good romancing to from Rossano Brazzi in Venice. It's a thin story - adapted from a play by Arthur Laurents by Lean and H. E. Bates - of a lonely woman looking for love and not knowing how to deal with it when it takes pushy and suave grey-templed form. Venice glows, though, and is the main reason for watching. The hotel where Kate H. stays is called the Pensione Fiorini in the film. This is not just a fictional hotel, it is a science fiction hotel, where different parts of the building 'beam' people to different parts of Venice. Its entrance is near San Marco, our heroine's room overlooks the Salute church and the terrace of the hotel seems to have been specially built on Campo San Vio. This is all filmed on location, but there are some outrageous liberties taken with geography all through the film, with the turn of a corner often taking the action instantly to somewhere miles away. A shoe shop appears next to the Salute where no shops are, a dress shop is created in front of the church of San Gregorio and Katharine H. falls into a suspiciously clean canal in Campo San Barnaba. This is a film made in more innocent times, though, where sex is suggested by fireworks going off, and so allowances must be made. For a whole page devoted to Summertime location-finding click here There's some fascinating background info here too. Tempesta
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A whisper in the dark (Un Sussuro nel buio) 1976 Straight off I need to say that this film has about 5 minutes of Venice in it. The blurb says that the action's set in a 'decadent Venetian villa', but it's actually the Villa Condulmer in Mogliano on the mainland. But to fend off my feelings of foolishness at having bought the damn thing I'm reviewing it here, and telling you it's a treat for the eyes and torture for the ears, much like Who saw he die? below. Bad dubbing, cheesy music and dialogue, and a children's choir going 'la la la' at regular intervals is set against some notably opulent design and good camera work. Who was Edgar Allan (Wer war Edgar Allan?) Michael Haneke 1985 A German TV film directed by Haneke early in his career, taken from a novel by Austrian author Peter Rosei which doesn't seem to have been translated into English. It's described as a 'post-modern thriller' in which 'an art history student becomes obsessed with and mysteriously linked to an American'. Who saw her die? Directed by Aldo Lado, this is an Italian film starring worst-Bond-ever and chocolate advert star George Lazenby, sporting some tragic 70s facial hair, as an artist hunting the killer of his daughter in a tastefully misty winter Venice. It's kind of like Don't Look Now - kind of - except that this one has some soft-core porn, is a bit more nasty, and has a soundtrack featuring a screechy kids' choir written by Ennio Morricone. The photography is actually pretty good, with some good use of locations, including a memorable pursuit through the then-derelict Molino Stucky on Giudecca - see above right. (It's now a luxury hotel, but the windows remain the same.) The film has a washed out look, though, which may be intentional, or the fault of an old print; and some of the the dubbed dialogue is truly atrocious. I doubt there's a subtitled version available - I watched a cheapo video available from www.salvation-films.com Easy on the eye, but hard on the ears, this one's well worth a look, then, if you too see it in a bargain bin. Update - this is now available on DVD in The Giallo Collection from Anchor Bay in the US, and it turns out that the washed-out look was down to the video, as the picture quality of the DVD is first rate and sharp. This helps accentuate what's good about this film, but the not-so-good acting and ropey dubbing remain. Still, this gives great Venice, using backstreet locations and looking really real. The DVD extras include a short interview with the director in which he reveals he grew up in Venice and wanted to show a non-touristy and grimmer side of Venice. Mission accomplished. The wings of the dove Based on a typical Henry James novel. Helena Bonham-Carter plays Kate Croy who has been placed in the care of her rich aunt (Charlotte Rampling) by her dissolute father. The aunt disapproves of Kate's relationship with lefty journalist Merton (Linus Roach, introduced to us ranting about the rich with his mates in a pub) and threatens withdrawal of care and funds should the relationship continue. Into this drops Milly Theale, a very rich American indeed, who becomes enamoured of Kate and Merton and invites them to Venice, where things get complicated. Venice has never looked more gorgeous on film - blimey even London looks fine and Edwardian with lots of grey stone buildings and a period tube station. The Palazzo Milly rents, called the Palazzo Leporelli in the book, is here stood-in-for by Palazzo Barbaro, where Henry James famously stayed many times. Our heroines enter the palazzo, go up the stairs in the courtyard, and walk through the central sala to the windows overlooking the Grand Canal in exactly the same way as Charles and Sebastian do in Brideshead Revisited above, but at night. The photography, the emotional stuff and the frocks gave me goose pimples, damp eyes, and an unusual admiration, respectively. A lovely and moving film and yes, there is a gondola funeral. |
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