The maestri in Umbria-Marches
Among the great Italian filmmakers such as Fellini, De Sica, Visconti and Pasolini, almost all of them have lived in Umbria and the Marches. The cities of Assisi, Perugia and Ancona were used as settings for some of their works, but also for many nuggets of Italian cinema. Among these masters, Luchino Visconti, one of the founders of Italian neo-realism, shot part of Les Amants diaboliques (1943) in Ancona. This adaptation of James M. Cain's short story The Postman Always Rings Twice takes on social overtones here as Visconti depicts the meeting of Gino and Giovanna, and their budding adultery. Follow in their footsteps as you walk through the Molo Santa Maria and Piazza del Duomo, with the San Ciriaco cathedral in the background. You will not be able to climb the Nappi staircase, or discover the Palazzo Davalos and the church of Santa Maria in Curtea, as these monuments were destroyed a few months after the filming by the Allied bombing, giving this film an undeniable archive status. In Umbria, it is the region of Perugia that remains the main muse of filmmakers, starting with Fellini. In 1952, he incorporated the opera of Spoleto into his film The White Sheik, an idyllic tale of a honeymoon disturbed by the meeting of a mysterious and seductive actor of photo-novels. In 1966, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Vittorio De Sica both filmed near Perugia. The former directed The Birds, Small and Large (1966), with Totò in the main role, while the latter directed The Fox Escapes at Three (1966), with the great Peter Sellers(Doctor Strangelove, The Pink Panther, among others). In this dramatic comedy, the actor plays Aldo Vanucci, a professional swindler escaping from a prison that is none other than the Rocca Albornoziana, a fortress built in the fourteenth century that dominates the city of Spoleto. Two years later, director Franco Zeffirelli filmed several scenes from his famous Romeo and Juliet (1968) in the fortified town of Gubbio. You will easily recognize the Palazzo Bargello, but also the Via Ducale, scene of the introduction of the film, and of the battle between the rival factions. In the 1970s, the giallo genre took over the area, led by Dario Argento and his films Four Flies of Grey Velvet (1971) and The Shivers of Anguish (1975). You will tremble as you relive the scenes of the cimitero monumentale, via Enrico dal Pozzo in Perugia, in this universe of horror so particular to Italy, before discovering another fine example of the genre with Sergio Martino's Torso (1971), relating a series of sordid murders around the University of Perugia.
European and international productions
Catherine Deneuve, Jodie Foster, Brigitte Bardot, Helena Bonham Carter or Virginie Efira: so many great international names who have stopped in the region, according to the shootings. In 1962, it was at the Spoleto theater festival that Louis Malle reunited Brigitte Bardot and Marcello Mastroianni in Vie privée, while Fabio (Mastroianni) was putting on a play. Carol Reed, a great British filmmaker of the 1950s, uses the city of Todi and its Piazza del Popolo as a substitute for St. Peter's Square in The Ecstasy and the Agony, a story about Michelangelo's painting of the Sistine Chapel, played by Charlton Heston. As for Assisi, it is obviously the story of St. Francis that has captivated the imagination of the cinema, with two films: Francis of Assisi by the great Michael Curtiz(Casablanca, Mildred Pierce) in 1961, and Francesco in 1989 with Mickey Rourke and Helena Bonham Carter, filmed in part at the Rocca Paolina in Perugia. Also worth mentioning is the enchanting presence of Jodie Foster and Catherine Deneuve in Sergio Citti's film The Lovers' Cabin (1977), in which the latter appears near a spring in Campello sul Clitunno and then in front of the façade of the Chiesa San Donato in nearby Campello Alto. A short pilgrimage in the footsteps of the great actress is within walking distance, before going to Bevagna, in Piazza Filippo Silvestri , to immerse yourself in the atmosphere of the recently released Benedetta (2021) by Paul Verhoeven, with Virginie Efira in the lead role
Two regions revitalized by the cinema
While Italian cinema is declining and the great era of Cinecittà seems to be over, some filmmakers are nevertheless allowing these regions to continue to appear on the screen. Roberto Benigni, director and lead actor of the heartbreaking La Vita è bella (1997), uses the Papigno studios in Umbria to reproduce the sad setting of the concentration camp where Guido and his family are locked up. This film was to become famous far beyond Italian borders, winning the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival the following year, before going on to win three Oscars, including the one for best foreign film. In the Marches, it is Nanni Moretti who shoots in Ancona almost the entirety of his feature film The Son's Room (2001). You will see many parts of the city such as the stadio Dorico, the spiaggia del Passetto or the corso Garibaldi, where one of the characters attends a strange manifestation of Hare Krishna. Finally, there is the film Our Best Years or La Meglio Giioventù
(2003) by Marco Tullio Giordana, a 366-minute monument shot in part in Perugia and considered by many critics as one of the best Italian films of the century. In recent years, the two regions have each set up structures to support film production. The Marche region allows many Italian filmmakers to make short and feature films, both fiction and documentary, while Umbria launched last September its first film festival, the Umbria Film Festival, based in Todi. These two regions have also hosted several Italian series, the most memorable of which is undoubtedly the soap opera Don Matteo, in which Terence Hill plays a shrewd and insightful priest with an uncanny ability to solve crimes. Brigands and thugs abstain. Travelers, let yourself be carried away in this world of cinema italiano.
