Day
2 in Venice, and as the press accreditation desk wasn’t opening till the
afternoon, that left the morning free for a visit to the Libreria Solaris, the
only place in Venice for film books and DVDs (and I mean ‘only’ in both senses
of the word). Having grabbed a fistful of movies – including the Italian
releases of both HerculesHercules Unchained, which I
fervently hope are taken from better prints than the budget discs available in
the States – I moseyed on back to the hotel and then over to the Lido,
pondering awhile the relationship between Venice and the movies.
Moonraker
Venice
has often been likened to a living film set, a most appropriate comparison
considering the city was literally conjured into reality from nothing. And yet,
paradoxically, it’s the very unreality of the place, the sheer improbability of
it, that leaves the deepest impression on even the most fleeting of visitors.
Venice exists, but a part of your mind is always aware that it shouldn’t.
As
with actual film sets, some directors make better use of them than others,
while the very best contrive to make the production design an integral part of
the story rather than mere backdrop. In this regard, Venice is no exception.
Some
of the more memorable instances of Venice as backdrop include Sean Connery,
Daniela Bianchi, and Matt Monro combining for the final sequence of From
Russia with Love (1963), as James Bond unspools a reel of compromising film
into the Grand Canal. Bond was back in Venice in 1979 for the puerile Moonraker,
in which Roger Moore struggled to maintain his dignity while driving a
gondala-cum-car through St. Mark’s Square, in addition to having a smashing
time in a fight sequence set in a Murano glass factory. And more recently, an
actor with ginger hair, inexplicably cast as 007, was involved in the
preposterously overblown CGI destruction of an entire Venetian palazzo in the
preposterously over-praised Casino Royale (2006).
Bonaparte
wasn’t the only Napoleon to invade Venice. One hundred and seventy years after
the megalomaniac Corsican brought an end to the Venetian Republic, Robert
Vaughn took time off from playing Napoleon Solo to appear in The Venetian
Affair (1967), a tale of murky goings-on derived from a book by Helen MacInnes
and co-starring Euro-spy stalwarts Luciana Paluzzi and Elke Sommer, together
with none other than Karloff the Uncanny in one of his last roles.
Entirely
by coincidence, of course, Illya Kuryakin was on hand for a fortuitous Man
from U.N.C.L.E. photo-opportunity, when David McCallum “just happened†to
be in the vicinity while filming the obscure romantic comedy, Three Bites of
the Apple, opposite Eurobabe Sylva Koscina.
Arrived in Venice, to be greeted by Terence Hill. Not in person, you understand, with brass band and Bud Spencer on trombone, but, turning on the TV in my hotel room, there was Terence, beaming blandly. . . . This seemed auspicious, not only because I’m here to cover the Spaghetti Western retrospective at this year’s Venice Film Festival, which includes two Terence Hill movies, but also because Terence is, apparently, as revealed by some remarkably tedious and unproductive research prior to this trip, Venice’s greatest gift to cinema. Indeed, it seems he is Venice’s only gift to cinema – or at any rate, the only one with any serious claim to international recognition. Which seems odd, somehow, given La Serenissima’s high profile in the film world due to the Festival, to say nothing of its appearance as a location in literally hundreds of movies, but there it is. Of course, hosting a film festival is no guarantee of cinematic progeny (vide Cannes) but Venice is . . . well, Venice—home to Marco Polo, Casanova, Goldoni, Vivaldi, Canaletto . . . and Terence Hill.
However, my initial pleasure at seeing Terence quickly evaporated on realising that what I was watching was an episode of his seemingly endless series, Don Matteo, in which Hill plays a priest, one who resolves issues with a kindly smile and a pious platitude rather than a Trinity-like series of well-placed punches. This lamentable conclusion to Hill's career apparently dates back to the success of the Trinity films, after which he was, so he says, constantly approached by mammas burdened with bawling bambini who thanked him, with tears in their eyes, for making movies suitable per tutta la famiglia. Since then, and the apparent end of his partnership with Spencer, Hill has pursued the family-values agenda so assiduously that he must be an outstanding candidate for the Michael Medved Lifetime Achievement Award for Saccharine Sentimentality. <!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--> <!--[endif]-->
Who can forget his spectacular miscasting of himself, both as actor and director, in the execrable Don Camillo in 1983? (I’ve tried, but nothing seems to work.) Or his wretched turn as Lucky Luke in a series of infantile TV movies? I suppose, with hindsight, we should have been warned by the fact that St. Terence enjoyed his biggest success playing a character called Trinity, but how were we to know that he harboured ambitions to be the Pat O'Brien of his day, and that the rest of his solo career, post-My Name Is Nobody, could easily be headlined They Call Me Sanctimonious…?
As watching Don Matteo is rather like being mugged by Bing Crosby (though without the songs), I grabbed the zapper and managed to catch the final showdown of Il mucchio selvaggio, or The Wild Bunch, if you prefer. While Pike Bishop and the Gorch brothers may not sound quite right growling at each other in Italian, it didn't make much difference to Coffer and T.C., who spend most of the movie jabbering and gesticulating like a pair of Venetian fishwives anyway. Nonetheless, the legendary bullet ballet provided just the right antidote to the toe-curling banalities of Don Matteo.
And so to bed. Tomorrow, after all, is another day . . .