Movies in Italy: Lo sceicco bianco (Federico Fellini, 1952)

In Fellini's early critique of patriarchal Italy, a couple, Ivan and Wanda, travels to big-city Rome for their honeymoon, to meet Ivan's extended family, and to meet the pope.  It's Italian provincialism coming home to roost in its big glittering capital that, for all intents and purposes, operate along the same codes of conduct.  The proud Ivan wants everything to be perfect so that his family sees his picture-perfect wife, but Wanda has other plans.  When her husband takes a nap, Wanda escapes to the Cinecitta, where she meets her film idol "the White Sheik".   However, what was supposed to be a few minutes of fawning turned into hours of discovering the reality behind the film industry, while Ivan spends his time worrying about his family's reputation if they find out that his wife left him for a foreign royalty.  Even though the woman is shown as a victim not only of social repression but also the illusions provided as a form of "escape,"  the husband is ultimately seen as the one who shoulders much of society's demands, trying to coordinate the conflicting wants of his society, family, and wife.  Throughout the film, Ivan sports a discombobulated and helpless look, and for much of the film he is reduced to a sobbing boy incapable of maintaining his crumbling world.  When he finally reunites with his wife, he goes back to his domineering demeanor as he meets his family in the Vatican, in a symbolic return back to the stability of the family and church.

Perfect Timing

Taken at around 3:00 AM, this was the earliest time that the Trevi Fountain really cleared out of other visitors so I could have it all to myself.  Hardly the time when romance is at its peak, the perfect lighting and the relative silence (except the water echoing throughout the piazza) made it a worthwhile wait nevertheless.

Hop on the Italian Booze Cruise!

Ma Che Siete Venuti a Fa, Rome's reputed best pub for Italian craft beer and considered one of the best pubs in the world, is celebrating its 10-year anniversary by sailing a very big boat from Rome to Barcelona and back carrying a lot of beer for a few lucky people.  The itinerary includes debates and discussions about beer, free supply of high-quality Italian craft beer, as well as a beer-centric tour of Barcelona, all for a not-so-bad price (starting at 275 euros).  Now, I've never heard of Spain in general and Barcelona in particular to be a great heaven for craft beer, but I think the free flow of craft beer on board is enough of a motivation to go.

Roman Street Poetry

"poetry is near to vital truth than history." - Plato

Eyesore to some, destruction to others--truth to those who see them everyday, written on the crumbling edifices of history. 

 In San Lorenzo district

 The political graffiti lining the walls of the city

"Work door to door" on an abandoned door by Via Giolitti 

 "I love you from here to the end of the world...and from there, to infinity" - along the banks of the Tiber, by Isola Tiberna

"A blank page is a poem unseen" - towards the Vatican

Graffitti Fridays: Rome

Movies in Italy: The Talented Mr. Ripley (Anthony Minghella, 1999)

*This series is to introduce you to the various films that were either set in Italy or were made in Italy, discussing how we as outsiders view the country and how Italians view themselves, and how this is expressed and experienced through the art of cinema

The Talented Mr. Ripley is an all-around movie that you could relate to whatever it is that’s bugging you at the moment: the role of women in a patriarchal society as seen in Marge’s character; Tom’s shape-shifting but ultimately tragic homosexual; Dickie’s invincibility and invisibility afforded to him by his privilege; even the rift between classical and modern music representing the coming social rift represented by the 60s. But for me what appealed is the Italy portrayed, and how it represents the Italy most expect when they visit the country. I think the movie tries to parody the self-absorbed relationship that the upper-class visitors has to Italy, but only unconsciously. There’s drama ,conflict, murder, but all of which have nothing to do with Italy or its people. A side-story about a tragic love-affair with an Italian woman was the closest these characters had at actually perceiving the country beyond their rose-colored spectacles, but even then it was easily dismissed as an element that revealed Dickie’s true character, without regard to the largely perfunctory and silent female character. The film have a lot of village scenes and postcard-pretty shots of Rome, Venice, and Sanremo, but it’s so remote to the story that I often questioned if the scenes were set in a sound studio. It’s like the film crew was on vacation, and they just needed to prove that they were there. There was no direct way that the scenery was engaged, no efforts to make the obviously staged market and street scenes more believable, not even to make the obviously exotic locales more palpable in their alieness. It might as well have been just another serial killer story set in Cleveland.