Viva Italia!

"Life offers you a thousand chances ... all you have to do is take one. "

One of the best feel good movies is "Under the Tuscan Sun." Starring Academy Award nominee Diane Lane, the story is about Frances Mayes, a 35-year-old San Francisco writer whose perfect life has just taken an unexpected detour. Her recent divorce has left her with terminal writer's block and extremely depressed, and her best friend, Patti, is beginning to think she might never recover. Frances decides to take a break and she buys a villa in the beautiful Tuscan countryside and decides to begin anew. Restoring her new home, she eventually finds the fulfillment she was searching for, including love. Based on the memoir written by Frances Mayes.

With the beautiful countrysides and exotic charm, Italy is a mecca for movie producers. While it's true that Hollywood producers typically look to the UK or France for overseas locations, few movie locations are as striking or as immediately identifiable as the Italian landscape, with its manicured hills, red-tiled roofs, and cobblestone piazzas.

Cinematography could hardly ignore all that, and in fact, the films set in rural and urban Tuscany are many. Tuscan-born directors naturally gravitate to their homelands: Benigni, Zeffirelli, Benvenuti among others. Non Tuscan ones, both Italian and foreign, have done well with their Tuscan venues.

Here are just a few:
Ridley Scott with Tom Harris’ Hannibal
Bertolucci with Io ballo da sola
Audrey Wells with Under the Tuscan Sun.
In these and many others the mere presence of Tuscany takes on the function of a dramatic element in the unfolding the plot and the identities of the personages.

Many other epics are filmed here even though the stories are not set in Tuscany as such: Ridley Scott’s Gladiator, in which scenes meant to be in Spain were filmed in and near Siena, and Denys Arcand’s Invasion of the Barbarians, in which people drink an Excelsus of Villa Banfi produced in Montalcino. Shakespeare is a frequent guest: Zefirelli made three Romeo and Juliets here, Kenneth Branagh chose a villa near Greve in Chianti for Much Ado About Nothing, as did Robert Hofmann for A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The Taviani brothers created Goethe’s Elective Affinities in and near Pisa, while Australia’s Jane Campion set Henry James’s Portrait of a Lady in Lucca. All the world knows the James Ivory renditions of Room with a View set on Florence’s river fronts or lungarni and in the surrounding countryside, nor can one forget Minighella’s Tuscan stagings of The English Patient, Benigni’s Life is Beautiful and Fellini’s Eight and a Half. Star Wars Episode I was filmed in the palace where Allied forces kept their headquarters during World War II. The Red Violin was set in the town where Stradivari and many others transformed violins into works of art.

So maybe you can't quite afford the time off or a ticket to Italy but a nice hearty glass of red wine and one of the favorite films mentioned above might give you a Viva Italia feeling in your own home.

Thanks to: http://www.imdb.com, http://www.lebaccanti.com/travel-incentives-tuscany.php?id=51 and http://www.italian-movie-trips.com.