GETTING LOST IN ITALY - THREE MOVIES GET LOST IN THE PIAZZA WHILE EATING GIALTO

Watching three movies set in Italy in close succession was an accident. 

     I wasn't even watching any Giallo.  But what I noticed as I was watching these movies that they all were about travelling to Italy.  An Italian Holiday if you will.  I love travelling.  As a child I use to my finger over my Dad's Atlas, imaging myself in the Lourve, on a bullet train in Japan, looking up at the Empire State Building.  When I got to New York I didn't go to the top, I hate heights.  Most of my travels is me looking at tall things.  Stepping back into the present, I was actually trying to save to go to Europe for my dreaded Fortieth Birthday.  It was the perfect way to escape the general anxiety of growing old and reclaim my youth, the last time I visited Europe I was in my early Twenties.    But since the world has imploded I have gone back to looking at maps again.  For me travelling is about escape, to be in an environment where you can let your usual inhabisions aside.  And for me all these movies are primary about this escape, to varying degress of success.  Books and Movies are the best way to travel, especially when you can't.

 ROMAN HOLIDAY - DIRECTED BY WILLIAM WYLER 1953

    The Plot of Roman Holiday is familar, it's a fairy tale: escaped innocent princess being tricked by local jounralist to get a story.  You know the story.  But it's oh so delightful.  This is because of Audrey Hepburn was 1.7m of pure charm and charisma, and this is her first major role.  It's her show and she is chaaarrrrming.  One of my favourite things about Roman Holiday is the way Hepburn only armed with her personality is able get free money and goods from everyone she meets.  The only problem is I don't by the relationship between Hepburn and Gregory Peck.  As much as I love Peck, his Romantic Comedy stylings is that of a large Goose.  It's charming, but I was constantly worried that Peck was going to step of Hepburn.  Studios had a habit of paring Hepburn with older Movie Stars from decades past who were sill in vogue, like Carey Grant, Humphry Bogart and Fred Astaire.   And the Peck Hepburn connection feels particularly paternal.  

    Princess Anya escapes her hetic Royal Schedual by hitching a ride into Rome.  Wyler shoots a still recovering battle scared post World War Two Rome as a place of freedom and adventure.  The streets Hepburn and Peck scooter down are lined with street venders and other surprises.  Rome is an ancient wonderland full of exotic adventures waiting to be exoplored.  To be fair, I had the same impression on my visit to Rome all those years ago, I was in awe of the ancient ruins and art I had only seen in books and movies and they were right in front of me.  When you're in your early 20's it can be a dizzying expereince.  There is the freedom of anonymity when your travelling around in an unfamiliar city.  I recongize that dazzled expression Hepburn's face.

     In terms of Hollywood movies, countries like Italy is the perfect place to escape too, and Roman Holiday is the perfect example of this.  Roman Holiday is all about freedom.  The most famous scene is when Hepburn gets a hair cut.  It's famous for a reason, it's wonderful.  It's one of the great make over scenes and represents Princess Anya's desire to recreate herself into a different person.  And it shows Hepburn's ability to be quickly captavating.  The way the hair dresser Mario, played by Paolo Carlini, takes pride in his creation makes me smile.  When they are dancing later and he fixes her fringe, it's adorable.  If Roman Holiday was Princess Anya having adventures with Mario it might be a masterpiece.

    Even if I find the Journalist trying to get a story plot a little plodding, with Audry Hepburn wide eyed charm you see Rome in a new light.  Especially the jaded Gregory Peck as he falls in love with her.  The last shot is beautiful and captures the fantasy that is Roman Holiday.

DON'T LOOK NOW - DIRECTED BY NICOLAS ROEG 1973

    Don't Look Now is the type of movie I love.   There's a slow romanticism, that is disturbing and beautiful at the same time.  A story about a couple that is greiving over the loss of a child and the ghosts that hang around them.  You cannot pick a better setting than Venice.  It's a city of where romance and death meet, the city, it is almost a haunted city, forgotten by time and yet preserved as an amusment pleasure park that is slowly sinking into the sea.  I still remember my visit vividly.  There is no sound of cars as you wonder the thin warren like lane ways that weave into a maze, small door ways that lead into a Church you didn't know was there, only to find a massive and impossing Titian that for a moment will make you consider if there might be a higher power.  In Venice there are layers upon layers of history and ghosts all around you.  Venice is perfect place for a ghost story.

    Like other Nicolas Roeg movies, Don't Look Now is an overally senstive movie, something I am now coming to expect from a Roeg movie.  Out of all these movies Don't Look Know is a movie that feels the most connected to the setting.  The Ghosts are just above the surface, and everyone is sensitive to what is around them.  This is why I really like the love scene, even though realistic, it does show the two parallel life of the Baxter's, played by Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie.  A couple that loves each other and is intimate, but the cross cutting with them on their own the morning after tells a very different story of discolcation and isolation from one another, especially with Sutherland taking a slug of Whiskey in the morning.  The Baxter's are doing their best to be a couple again after the death of their daughter, shown in full horror by Roeg, but they are in a place that keeps bringing all the ghosts and dangers to the surface.  And it doesn't help having a blind clairvoyant following you all the time screaming.   Venice is a place that beats with every frame, and at times it's the city itself that poses the danger.  Venice may feel the perfect romantic get away, but it's where the ghosts live.

THE TALENT MR. RIPLEY - DIRECTED BY ANTHONY MINGHELLA 1999

    I'm not going to bury the lead.  Anthony Minghella's The Talented Mr. Ripley is on of my favourite movies.  I avoided watching it for so long, because I had the opposite reaction to Minghella's Academy Award Winner The English Patient.  Mr. Ripley feels like the movie you get to make when you win Best Director, it's a personal intimate movie that I love to live in.  Minghella takes the wicked smart and cynical novel by Patrica High Smith and turns it into a vulnerable piece about deep loneliness, isolation and self hatred so strong it leads to fraud and murder.  Tom Ripley in this movie is much more of a Norman Bates character, there's sympathy built into the cake of the movie.  When I was younger, I truly believed there was a magical property moving to a new city, that the alchemy of the anonymity turned you into a different person.  But, like Ripley, your self hatred will always follow you.  A little like the Ghosts in Don't Look Now.  It's the way Tom Ripley  mimics different voices and personalities, he is trying on personalities like people try on new pieces of clothing.

    The Talented Mr. Ripley is a gorgeous movie.  Like Wyler, Minghella films Italy that is exotic, the perfect play ground for the children of the wealthly. As Cate Blanchette scene stealingly says (when Philip Seymour Hoffman isn't stealing them) that the Wealthy only feel comfortable around people who have money and despise it.  This is really the thesis of The Talented Mr Ripley.  While the rest of the characters are the weathly who dispise thier wealth;  Tom desires money and loathes those with it.  It makes the relationships, especially those with Jude Law's Dickie Greenleaf the most complex and delicious.  Dickie and Tom's relationship is connected to how they each see Italy.  Dickie see's Tom as a new play thing, a diverson from taking any responsibilty in his life.  Tom see's Dickie as social climbing and ambition, but also a good helping of lust and jealiously.  The way Dickie plays and pushes Tom is magnetic, epsecially the scene with Dickie in the bath tub, there is a way he lingers next to Tom, almost daring him.  Mingehella keeps focus on the mirror's reflection of the dripping wet Dickie, and he will never be within Tom's grasp.  Just like the life he aspires to, it's always going to be a reflection or an illusion.  This is why Ripley is more a criminal of oppertunity, noting is completely formed until he has to murder.  I love Damon's performance, because you can see the wheels turning with each moment.  Every time he's in a new place, he changes his personality to what he thinks is the best reflection.  It's almost the perfect metaphore for when you travel.  You want to be your best self, or how you see your best self, whether it is a honest reflection is almost beside the point.

    Watching these three movies all have a youthful quality to it.  Even Don't Look Now.  For me at least, it's how I see Italy.  My memory is me running around like an excieted bunny pointing and spouting annoying facts to anyone that would listen.  I was broke in Italy, but I could afford cheap red wine and amazing bread.  It is a time in my life that only have nostagia for.  And it defiently colours how I watched these movies, especially sice I am stuck in my house not being able to go five kilometres past my house.  One day I will travel again.  But in till that time I will have to escape through the silver screen.