the romantic travel movie, italian-style

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This article was downloaded by: [University of California, Riverside Libraries] On: 24 October 2014, At: 20:54 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Visual Anthropology: Published in cooperation with the Commission on Visual Anthropology Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/gvan20 The Romantic Travel Movie, Italian-Style James A. Clapp Published online: 17 Dec 2008. To cite this article: James A. Clapp (2008) The Romantic Travel Movie, Italian-Style , Visual Anthropology: Published in cooperation with the Commission on Visual Anthropology, 22:1, 52-63, DOI: 10.1080/08949460802525827 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08949460802525827 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms- and-conditions

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Page 1: The Romantic Travel Movie,               Italian-Style

This article was downloaded by: [University of California, Riverside Libraries]On: 24 October 2014, At: 20:54Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Visual Anthropology: Published incooperation with the Commission onVisual AnthropologyPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/gvan20

The Romantic Travel Movie, Italian-StyleJames A. ClappPublished online: 17 Dec 2008.

To cite this article: James A. Clapp (2008) The Romantic Travel Movie, Italian-Style , VisualAnthropology: Published in cooperation with the Commission on Visual Anthropology, 22:1, 52-63,DOI: 10.1080/08949460802525827

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08949460802525827

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as tothe accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinionsand views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Contentshould not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sourcesof information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever orhowsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arisingout of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Page 2: The Romantic Travel Movie,               Italian-Style

The Romantic Travel Movie, Italian-Style

James A. Clapp

Movies and travel often evoke similar emotions: each can transport us to times pastand faraway places. Nowhere in the film genre is this more evident than in the‘‘romantic travel movie’’ (RTM), where the exotic setting can play a fickle cupidto those who cross cultures and times zones in quest of true and lasting love.Romantic travel movies can be set in a variety of locales, but perhaps no place seemsto have advanced the style of conjoining falling in love with a country as well aswith a lover as does Italy.

On the movie screen Rosano Brazzi is leaning out as far as he can from the side ofa little canal in Venice. The Italian tenor-matinee-idol of the 1950s—remember‘‘sahm een-CHANTed EEEfff-ning. . .’’?—is straining to retrieve a gardenia thatwas accidentally dropped from a nearby bridge by Katherine Hepburn. Try ashe might the flower evades his grasp and he looks up at Kate with a sad smileand an Italic shrug of resignation as it floats away. That elusive flower prefiguresthe moment of truth in the film Summertime [1955], and represents an almostformulaic, bittersweet scene in that genre of cinema, the Romantic Travel Movie(hereafter RTM).

Brazzi plays the proprietor of a small shop that sells gaudy Venetian glass ona little piazza beside a canal. Hepburn is a somewhat skittish American school-teacher on her summer break first-time trip to Italy, and arguably on the down-ward slope toward what used to be uncharitably called ‘‘spinsterism.’’ You justknow that they must fall in love: it’s Venice, it’s tourist season, the soundtrackoozes Vivaldi and Rossini, there’s even a cute little Italian boy to play the cupidgo-between. You could watch this movie in reverse with Polish subtitles and stillfigure it out in three scenes.

Summertime displays all the essential ingredients of the Romantic TravelMovie. Brazzi bought Hepburn that gardenia in Piazza San Marco, with itspeople, pigeons, and ‘‘people-pigeons’’ being overcharged for cappuccino andsappy music coming from the Florian cafe. He’s dashing, with a dash ofvulnerability; she’s vulnerable with more than a dash of Midwestern school-marm protective skepticism. It’s a match made in a heavenly casting office, with

JAMES A. CLAPP is emeritus professor of Urbanism and City Planning at San Diego StateUniversity. He was a Fulbright Scholar in Hong Kong in 2000 and a Visiting Professor at theUniversity of Paris in 1989 and 1999. His most recent book, writing as Sebastian Gerard, is ForGoodness Sake, A Novel of the Afterlife of Suzie Wong (2008), and he is currently writinga novel about the Three Gorges Dam in China. He is president of Urbis Media Productions. E-mail:[email protected]

Visual Anthropology, 22: 52–63, 2009Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

ISSN: 0894-9468 print=1545-5920 online

DOI: 10.1080/08949460802525827

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all the dramatic tension of different cultures coming together on some of the mostcompellingly romantic urban turf any place in the world. Summertime, underDavid Lean’s sublime direction, is the ‘‘classic’’ RTM.

But that elusive flower, sold to Brazzi by an old woman flower-seller whomuttered something enigmatic about ‘‘amore’’ sets us up for the inevitable ‘‘sojust where is ‘happily every after’ going to be?’’ What happens when the summertrip is over? Shall we live in Venice, or Ohio? Some choice. The corollary to theaxiom that ‘‘you can’t go home again’’ is, in the RTM, often: ‘‘but you must gohome again.’’

If you haven’t seen Summertime this won’t spoil the ending for you. But thegardenia comes back into it, this time in a train station scene, another regularfeature of many RTMs, at least of the 1950s vintage. In any event, with Lean’scamera directions it doesn’t matter whether we fall in love with Hepburn orBrazzi, or whether they fall out of love with one another, the audience can’t helpfalling in love with Venice in summer. It almost can’t help succumbing to theemotional slippery slide of the RTM.

Summertime is my favorite RTM, but one can get a good argument from movie-goers about what film is the best Romantic Travel Movie. As with romance itself,preferences are nothing if not highly subjective. The younger generation mightprefer something like the bittersweet Out of Africa [1985] though the leads playedby Meryl Streep and Robert Redford might seem too worldly and tormented, andKenya’s lion-prowled savannas hardly serve as an easy place for a romanticpicnic or strolling hand-in-hand.

Some might prefer Before Sunrise [1995] with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy.He’s American, she’s French, and they meet on a train and fall in love inand around Vienna. But their romance, as the title suggests, is literally a ‘‘one-nighter’’ and filled with too much Generation X angst and the melancholyfilm noir shadows in which the mysterious Harry Lime lurked in the classicThe Third Man.

Then how might we determine the requirements of a good romantic travelmovie?

FIRST, FIND A ROMANTIC LOCALE

One of the requirements for a good RTM is that it be set in a romantic place.Stockholm, for example, doesn’t qualify. Despite Sweden’s reputation for lackof prudery when it comes to the cinema, one thinks immediately of thosetormented characters in Bergman films: interminable scenes filled withgloomy-mooded relationships in a city with a distressingly high rate of‘‘self-dispatchment.’’

A sunny location helps, but even a city like Jerusalem puts a damper onromance, with three great religions ready to wag an admonitory finger at anyoutward display of affection.

Some sunny cities seem to fit romance for less than ‘‘straight’’ relationships, theTangiers of Paul Bowles, for example. Bertolucci’s beautifully photographedversion of Bowles’ The Sheltering Sky [1990] is a travel movie full of kinky

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escapades in tents and shuttered rooms in North African towns, not alfrescoromps in the piazzas or Tuscan meadows. And what movie buff couldforget what Liz Taylor found so unspeakable in Suddenly Last Summer [1959]when her character and her mysterious brother traveled to the seaside town inNorth Africa?

Exotic locales can stir up hormones, but cultural distances can prove too great agulf for the romantic heart to breach successfully. The cultures of the Far East, asreflected in several films, can put up too many social obstacles for the types ofromantic protocol to which Westerners have grown accustomed. Love is a ManySplendored Thing [1955] matched an American journalist played by WilliamHolden with Jennifer Jones as a Eurasian doctor, Han Su Yin, in Hong Kong. Rootas audiences did for their romance to work out, both characters had to battle the‘‘East is East and West is West’’ prejudices of their respective cultures. Movie-goers were left to wonder whether they might ever have overcome such obstacleswhen the male lead becomes a Korean War fatality before they could get muchbeyond love’s early blushes.

From Fletcher Christian in Mutiny on the Bounty [1953, 1962] to Nellie Forbushin South Pacific [1958] racial and cultural differences add sometimes insurmount-able walls to the prospects for ‘‘happily ever after’’ romances. Who could forgetSayonara [1957], with its American soldiers brazenly fraternizing with lovelyJapanese maidens. One wonders what could be worse: despite Red Buttonsand Miyoshi Umeki lying in suicidal embrace because neither society can abideinterracial marriages, Marlon Brando is determined to haul a beautiful traditionalJapanese dancer off to a life in post-war Tennessee. Sayonara indeed.

So there is no need to dawdle any further because in the end the best place for aromantic travel movie is Italia, per certo! Where else could one make a film likeThree Coins in the Fountain [1954]? That’s the magnificent Bernini-sculpted TreviFountain, of course, into which three young American secretaries toss theirobligatory coins, not so much to ensure their return to the Eternal City, as to sum-mon the Roman goddess Fortuna’s favors in their quests for eternal conjugal bliss[Figure 1]. Less spinsterish and less gullible than Kate Hepburn in Venice, theyemploy coquettishness, guile, and hometown-girl-next-door tactics, in additionto lucky coins, to land husbands. Contrary to the affairs in most RTMs they suc-ceed, and in the process another dimension of these movies is amply illustrated:the story-line is wedded to a travelogue that visits, by way of film locations,nearly every fabled historical site of the Eternal City. The title song, which hungaround the charts during the 1950s, has probably drifted through the heads ofmore than one traveler who saw the film: ‘‘Three coins in the fountain=Eachone bringing happiness. . . .’’

By the 1960s it wasn’t even necessary to fall in love with a foreigner. In fact, inRome Adventure [1962], which unabashedly shows off a different tourist attractionfor each scene, Suzanne Pleshette spurns Rosano Brazzi’s advances (he had puton a few pounds after Hepburn left him on the train platform in Venice) for thoseof fellow countryman Troy Donahue. But when it comes to romantic travelmovies this one is little more than an American ‘‘beach blanket’’ flick flavoredwith a little garlic and basil, earning it greater acclaim from the Italian touristauthorities than tasteful film critics.

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The beautiful settings of Italian cities not only hold out to the traveler andmoviegoer the promise of romance, they have also played a role in launchingthe careers of great film stars. Roman Holiday [1953] did just that for the otherMs. Hepburn, Audrey, who earned an Academy Award for ‘‘Best Actress’’ forher charming performance as an ‘‘ingenue-ish’’ princess enjoying a brief but lim-ited romp through Rome on the arm of the more mature, even dashing, GregoryPeck [Figure 2].

As usual, the Eternal City had a part to play, as the couple got to know eachother in and around many of its famous sights. Even the lesser known Bocca dellaVerita, the large old sewer cover with the face of Poseidon on it, provided a comicset-piece when Peck, explaining to the princess that in past ages husbands usedto ask their wives to place their hands in the stone mouth and answer questionsas to their conjugal fidelity. Explaining the lore was that the jaws would close onhands of liars Peck demonstrates by putting his own hand in the mouth, feigningit becoming stuck, and then withdrawing with his hand tucked up his sleeve. Thegamine Ms. Hepburn is horrified, then, of course, amused. Untold moviegoershave searched out the Bocca (in the portico of the church of Santa Maria inCosmedin) to replay the scene.

But holidays come and go, and so does the romance between this more believ-able couple. The princess must return to her royal obligations, and anotherromantic travel episode is undone by time and circumstance. If only one loveaffair survived that summer in Rome it was the enduring one that formed

Figure 1 Poster with (incorrect) Villa d’Este fountains, rather than the Trevi Fountain. (20thCentury Fox).

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between Audrey Hepburn and movie audiences everywhere. She is still hot stuffin China.

Roman Holiday, like several others that made Italy the premier location forRTMs, was made during the heydays of the Roman film studios at Cinecitta.These films helped make Rome, as dubbed by Sam Steinman of The HollywoodReporter, ‘‘Hollywood on the Tiber.’’ American movie stars such as Gregory Peck,Shelley Winters, Anthony Quinn, Ava Gardner and Burt Lancaster flocked to theRoman studio, filling movie magazines with stories of their own biculturalromances, much of it publicized by the Roman journalism’s infamous paparazzi.

Film stars of the ’50s turned streets like the Via Veneto into icons of the hedon-istic sweet life of success, fame, and the prospect of romance in the city fromwhich that term is derived. Only some of the movies they made were of theRTM genre. There were the classical features such as Ben Hur, and Antony andCleopatra (somewhat of an RTM), and The Agony and the Ecstasy, the eventual‘‘spaghetti westerns,’’ and even commentaries on the stars themselves, the cityand their romances, in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita.

Moreover, Italy’s cities and landscapes were complimented nicely by thegrowing popularity of its feminine pulchritude. What male actors like Brazzi,Gassman, and Mastroianni were doing to sell movie and plane tickets to foreignwomen, Lollobrigida, Cardinale, and Loren were doing for men. It was onlynatural for producers to consider the box office prospects of cross-culturalromance in the post-war boom in international travel. With the emergence ofLockheed Constellations, and then Boeing 707s, and airfares within reach ofthe average moviegoer, one didn’t have to be a movie star to perhaps findromance in Italy. It might happen to just about anybody.

Clark Gable wasn’t just ‘‘anybody,’’ but for him the ‘‘it’’ in It Started in Naples[1960], the title of the RTM in which the running-to-fat matinee idol stars oppositethe showcasing of a young and voluptuous Sophia Loren, was romance. Gableplays a crusty Yank businessman somewhat reluctantly in Italy to settle some

Figure 2 Hepburn and Peck take a Roman Holiday moment on the Spanish Steps. (ParamountPictures).

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matter relating to a little Caprese boy sired by his brother who died in World WarII. The kid speaks a very-dubbed sounding American street-slang, which allowshim to play cupid to the leads. The picture may start in Naples, but is actuallyfilmed in picturesque Capri, the isle off its coast, perhaps so that Loren, a genuineNeopolitan, can appear a bit more of an innocent small-town girl than she mightamidst the wicked reputation of the big and ancient city. It also launched hermotion picture career as she sings, dances, even cooks pasta, and runs throughevery emotion the producers wanted us to see. It’s a romantic comedy, so, afterappropriate misunderstandings and the intercession of the kid-cupid, Sophiasecures the adoration of Gable far later than that of every red-bloodedmale watch-ing [Figure 3]. The unlikely pair fall in love with each other after several conten-tious scenes, still leaving us to wonder whether the thickened Mr. Gable willsurvive the honeymoon only to overdose eventually on Sophia’s pasta.

CLASS WILL TELL

British romantic travel movies, like much of their other cinema, tend to be suf-fused with class consciousness. Perhaps because they apparently refuse to shedtheir woolens for more Mediterranean duds, the British, in contrast to theirAmerican counterparts, seem to prefer the more northerly reaches of thepeninsula. Even so, Italy’s sunny climate and Latin disposition seem sometimesso opposed to British reserve that there is little left for them to fall in love withthan those of their own station, or Italy itself. Judging by their cinematic travels

Figure 3 A young Sophia Loren prepares to dance her way into the heart of Clark Gable.(Paramount Pictures).

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in Italy in recently produced period pieces, the British apparently require thelibido-stirring climes of Tuscany to assist their romantic impulses.

In the Florentine setting of A Room with a View [1985] a clique of Edwardian-eraEnglish retain teatime and inappropriate clothing while losing only slightly theirromantic inhibitions. Actress Helena Bonham Carter, who has been on cinematicromance-seeking sojourns to Italy at least three times, plays the lead and a meta-phor for sexual uptightness and indecisiveness amidst the passionate Tuscans.Along with the rest of an excellent cast, she seems unable to keep from swooningat either the loveliness or the un-Britishness of it all.

The title of the film (from the E.M. Forster novel) might not simply refer towhat might be sound travel advice for anyone visiting Florence, but also to theway in which living in another place and culture, particularly one so contrastingas that between England and Italy, can provide a fresh perspective on our owncustoms and mores. It may be too much to expect for the character played byMs. Bonham Carter to tumble into an affair with one of the passionate locals,but the magnificent city and its surrounding hills provide a sufficient ‘‘renais-sance’’ in herself to reconsider marrying the wrong man back home.

Movie audiences are apparently enthralled enough with this scenario to justifyenough additions to the theme to compose a sub-genre among RTMs. Producersfound a rich vein in E.M. Forster novels, following a few years later with WhereAngels Fear to Tread [1991] featuring Helen Mirren as a sexually-repressed Englishwidow who finds love (from a scandalously younger handsome Italian) in theTuscan hills, but seems to be punished for descending from her upper-classbreeding by dying in childbirth. It was in a nearby villa a few years earlier thata British romantic comedy featured two Englishwomen spending an EnchantedApril [1991] in escape from their overbearing husbands. The 1920s period piecereconfirms the lore that the ideal tonic for an ailing romance, or beginning anew one, is a charming villa on wisteria-covered slopes in sunny Italy.

More recently Ms. Bonham Carter, along with a countryman and an Americanheiress, turned up in Edwardian garb in Venice in The Wings of the Dove [1997], anurban setting whose decadence, tenebrous atmosphere and sinking fortunescompliment the romantic destinies of this star-crossed menage a trios [Figure 4].

Despite the failure of so many romances in such ideal settings it seems a goodbet that the British will not forsake Italy, cinematically or otherwise, though theycould do with a bit less class-consciousness and a bit more ‘‘when in Rome. . . .’’They might take a cue from the romantic stew composed of a beautiful Americangirl, an Irish sculptor, an English playwright, and a cast of young Italian men, allcontending for a lead in her ‘‘coming of age,’’ set in the breathtaking Tuscancountryside in Stealing Beauty [1996]. The girl, played by Liv Tyler, does ‘‘growup’’ in a rather steamy love scene, although the transition owes more to Italianvirility than to Italian geography [Figure 5].

VARIATIONS ON A THEME

If the traditional ‘‘boy meets girl’’ formulas seem to have problems fulfilling thefantasy for foreign affairs, so also do various other combinations. The older man,

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younger woman formula is reversed in the film version of Tennessee Williams’novella, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone [1961], in which an aging, rich, andshrewish Vivian Leigh tries vainly to keep her pride by buying sex from youngermen, principally that offered by a young Warren Beatty. But Mrs. Stone’s anticsare more a dark study of a twisted sexual relationship than of the libido-enhancing local sights of the city. Ms. Leigh, who had already played a similarcharacter in The Deep Blue Sea [1955], and closed her career in a characterchillingly reminiscent of the tragic Mrs. Stone in Ship of Fools [1965], seems neverto have recovered from Clark Gable’s ultimate rebuff of her Scarlet O’Hara inGone with the Wind [1939].

But it is Venice, not Rome, that seems most unsympathetic with the love-seeking traveler or tourist. The once comely ‘‘bride of the sea’’ is now a dowagerdressed in stained stucco and crumbling marble, ravaged rather than ravished bythe aqua alta of her erstwhile lover. While cinematographers are still drawn to her

Figure 5 Liv Tyler gets romantic counsel from ailing Jeremy Irons. (RPC).

Figure 4 English menage: Wings of the Dove in Venice.

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light, liquid reflections and other vestiges of her visual charms Venice neverthe-less appears unwilling, if we are to judge by the films made there, to allow herguests to fall in love with anyone but herself.

Indeed, the reputation of Venice is checkered, perhaps by its stronger associ-ation with Eros than Aphrodite. Consider that it was the home of that notoriousphilanderer, Giacomo Casanova, that its palazzi were the playground ofEngland’s most romantic versifier and womanizer, Lord Byron, and that itsCarnivale was perhaps the most extended period of masked ribaldry and sexuallicense since the Roman parties of Messalina.

Death in Venice [1971] was set in a more restrained period, a languoroussummer on the Lido before the First World War when the peril du jour wasa local outbreak of cholera. Based on Thomas Mann’s novel, in Visconti’s film,Dirk Bogarde plays an uptight but successful German author, Gustav vonAschenbach (based on the composer Gustav Mahler), becoming aware of somedecadent urgings within himself. The focus of these feelings is a beautifulyoung Polish boy, Tadzio, also residing at the hotel. Aschenbach develops adistant infatuation for the lad, but what ensues involves little more thanexchanges of longing looks and faint smiles [Figure 6]. More torrid is the loveaffair of the cinematographer, Pasqualino DeSantis, with Venice. Weakened byhis inner turmoil, Aschenbach, failing in his attempt to remove himself fromVenice and his idealization of youth and beauty, falls victim to the choleraepidemic.

Beauty and death conspire again to foil romance in Venice in the oddly-titledDon’t Look Now [1973]. The movie acquired a cult fame for its very ‘‘realistic’’ lovescene between Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie, who play the parents of adaughter who tragically drowned back in England. The title refers to Suther-land’s gift for precognition, as well as that of a blind-psychic Englishwomanwho has also traveled to Venice with her sister. The film is set in Venice, not onlybecause that’s where Sutherland is playing the director of an art restoration proj-ect in a church on the Grand Canal, but also because, in the fall and winter, whenthis film was made, Venice can be spooky and surreal. Indeed, the moods of these

Figure 6 Aschenbach struck by the beauty of youth. (Alfa Cinematografica).

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seasons seem most unpropitious for a romantic healing of their tragic loss.Unheeding his clairvoyance and the ominous warnings of the un-sighted psy-chic, Sutherland ends up fulfilling his own premonition of his wife attendinghis funeral.

Well past her best years, perhaps the envious former bride of the sea cares littlefor romantic hopes and broken hearts looking for love, new and lost, in her calle,canals, and piazzi. In Blume in Love [1973] George Segal wanders about amongstthe throngs of pigeons and perambulators of Piazza San Marco, yearning for therevival of the failed marriage he left back in the sylvan hills above Los Angeles.But the fabled square is uncaring, mocking his plight with its self-indulgent car-nival atmosphere. Few cities display the trappings of their past glories as unself-consciously as Venice. Gilded mosaics on the facades of magnificent palazzi,churches festooned with the gifts of its native artists, or the loot of its commerceand conquests, its bacino and great square the stages for pageantry and revelry,all lure the cinematographer as they did its great urban-scene painter, Canaletto.But perhaps the allure for the scenarist is the underlying melancholy of thisunique city, that nothing is forever, whether it’s great cities or great romances.

AND OCCASIONALLY. . . .

But it would be sad, if not cynical, to close a cinematic tour of Italy’s romanticlandscapes on the note of unfulfilled expectations. Occasionally romance inforeign lands does prove to be a ‘‘many-splendored thing,’’ even if it requires los-ing some of the illusions we bring in our emotional luggage. Such is the lesson ofOnly You [1994] in which the heroine, Faith (Marisa Tomei), dashes off to Italy onthe eve of her marriage to a dentist, in pursuit of a figment of her trickster-brother’s imagination—a dream lover by the name of Damon Bradley. Her questfor him leads us on a merry chase, through the lenses of that master cinematogra-pher, Sven Nykvist, from Venice to Rome and, finally, to Positano.

In each place, the aptly-named Faith is tantalizingly late in making contact withher quarry. In Rome, however, she acquires the assistance and romantic interestof an American shoe salesman, Peter (Robert Downey Jr.), but while she requitessome of his attentions, her momentum toward her dream lover impels heronward. The trail leads to Positano. Peter, less than enthusiastically, agrees toescort her to that lovely urban cascade on the southern slope of the AmalfiPeninsula.

In the course of events moviegoers fall in love with Italy’s cities as well as theprospect of lasting romance between the cute and sunny Ms. Tomei and the per-sistent, if perplexed, Mr. Downey. To report how that matter is resolved wouldbe to spoil for the reader this cinematic confection. However, this much of itsmoral might be disclosed: that true love is to be found no more in the imaginationthan it is in the romantic setting.

Happy ending aside, the screenwriter might have felt compelled to pay grudg-ing respect to the bittersweet tradition of romantic travel movies. In the course ofher travels Faith is escorted by her brother’s wife, Kate (Bonnie Hunt). Kate,perhaps standing in for more than one American wife on holiday in Italy, is in

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partial escape from a marriage back home to a roofing contractor that has lost itsromance. In Rome she becomes romantically attracted to Giovanni, a suave,handsome, hand-kissing Roman. He too joins the entourage to Positano. Butsometimes even a smooth gigolo is no match for a determined roofing contractorwho travels to Italy to reclaim his wife.

Travelers, like moviegoers entering theaters, bring with them their hopes, inhi-bitions, fantasies, desires and fears—their whole personalities. But foreign places,by taking us out of our usual settings and lives, often allow these traits wider lati-tude for expression. The distance and transience of travel can encourage tempor-ary self-reinvention. For a brief time the traveler might become a carefree playeron the stages of great cities, don safari jackets in Kenya, amuse himself or herselfamong the leisured classes on a cruise ship, or lurk in a Budapest cafe like aspook in a spy novel. The adventurous among us might even fancy a turn atfinding a fairytale romance, or simply a foreign affair.

Sometimes the romantic travel movie is the next best thing to the real thing.Sometimes it is no doubt better than the real thing. But it is a good bet that, as longas there are RTMs, some traveler=moviegoers will always want to find out forthemselves if that gardenia that fell in the Venetian canal is really out-of-reach.

FILMOGRAPHY (IN ALPHABETIC ORDER)

The Agony and the Ecstasy1965 NR Dir. Carol Reed. Starring Charlton Heston; Rex Harrison. Color, 138min.

Before Sunrise1995 R Dir. Richard Linklater. Starring Ethan Hawke; Julie Delpy. Color, 105min.

Ben Hur1959 NR Dir. William Wyler. Starring Charlton Heston; Stephen Boyd; Jack Hawkins. Color,

212min.Blume in Love

1973 Dir. Paul Mazursky. Starring George Segal; Susan Anspach; Kris Kristofferson. Color,115min.

Cleopatra1963 Dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz. Starring Elizabeth Taylor; Richard Burton; Rex Harrison; Pamela

Brown. Color, 192min.Death in Venice

1971 Dir. Luchino Visconti. Starring Dirk Bogarde; Bjorn Andresen; Silvana Magnano. Color,124min.

The Deep Blue Sea1955 NR Dir. Anatole Litvak. Starring Vivian Leigh; Kenneth Moore; Eric Portman. Color, 96min.

La Dolce Vita1960 NR Dir. Federico Fellini. Starring Marcello Mastroianni; Anita Ekberg; Anouk Aimee. B &

W, 174min.Don’t Look Now

1973 R Dir. Nicholas Roeg. Starring Donald Sutherland; Julie Christie; Hillary Mason. Color,110min.

Enchanted April1991 PG Dir. Mike Newell. Starring Miranda Richardson; Joan Plowright; Josie Lawrence; Polly

Walker. Color, 93min.Gone with the Wind

1939 NR Dir. Victor Flemming. Vivian Leigh; Clark Gable; Thomas Mitchell; Hattie McDaniel;Leslie Howard. Color, 226min.

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It Started in Naples1960 NR Dir. Melville Shavelson. Starring Clark Gable; Sophia Loren; Marietto; Vittorio De Sica.

Color, 100min.Love is a Many Splendored Thing

1955 NR Dir. Henry King. Starring Jennifer Jones; William Holden. Color, 102min.Mutiny on the Bounty

1935 NR Dir. Frank Lloyd. Starring Clark Gable; Charles Laughton; Franchot Tone. B & W,132min.

Only You1994 Dir. Norman Jewison. Starring Marisa Tomei; Robert Downey Jr.; Bonnie Hunt. Color,

115min.Out of Africa

1985 PG Dir. Sidney Pollack. Starring Meryl Streep; Robert Redford; Klaus Maria Brandauer.Color, 150min.

Roman Holiday1953 NR Dir. William Wyler. Starring Audrey Hepburn; Gregory Peck; Eddie Albert. B & W,

118min.The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone

1961 NR Dir. Jose Quintero. Starring Vivian Leigh; Warren Beatty; Lotte Lenya. Color, 104min.Rome Adventure

1962 NR Dir. Delmer Daves. Starring Suzanne Pleshette; Troy Donahue; Angie Dickensen;Rosano Brazzi. Color, 119min.

A Room with a View1985 NR Dir. James Ivory. Starring Helen Bonham Carter; Julian Sands; Daniel Day Lewis; Den-

holm Elliott. Color, 115min.Sayonara

1957 NR Dir. Joshua Logan. Starring Marlon Brando; Miko Taka; Red Buttons; Miyoshi Umeki.Color, 147min.

The Sheltering Sky1990 R Dir. Bernardo Bertolucci. Starring John Malkovich; Debra Winger; Campbell Scott. Color,

138 min.Ship of Fools

1965 NR Dir. Stanley Kramer. Starring Vivian Leigh; Simone Signoret; Oskar Werner; MichaelDunne; Lee Marvin. B & W, 149min.

South Pacific1958 NR Dir. Joshua Logan. Starring Rossano Brazzi; Mitzi Gaynor; John Kerr; Juanita Hall;

France Nuyen. Color, 157min.Stealing Beauty

1996 R Dir. Bernardo Bertolucci. Starring Liv Tyler; Jermey Irons; Ian Grayson. Color, 118min.Suddenly Last Summer

1959 NR Dir. Joseph L. Mankeiwicz. Starring Elizabeth Taylor; Montgomery Clift; KatherineHepburn. B & W, 114min.

Summertime1955 NR Dir. David Lean. Starring Katherine Hepburn; Rosano Brazzi. Color, 98min.

The Third Man1949 NR Dir. Carol Reed. Starring Joseph Cotton; Orson Wells; Trevor Howard. B & W, 93min.

Three Coins in the Fountain1954 NR Dir. Jean Negulesco. Starring Clifton Webb; Dorothy McGuire; Jean Peters; Louis

Jordan; Maggie McNamara; Rosano Brazzi. Color, 102min.Where Angels Fear to Tread

1991 PG Dir. Charles Sturridge. Starring Helen Mirren; Helena Bonham Carter; GovianniGuidelli; Rupert Graves. Color, 112min.

The Wings of the Dove1997 R Dir. Ian Softley. Starring Helena Bonham Carter; Linus Roache; Allison Elliot. Color,

102min.

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