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 . . .