La Cucina Eoliana e Siciliana

LA CUCINA EOLIANA E SICILIANA

the food of the eolian islands and sicily

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
copyright © la cucina eoliana e siciliana ~ all rights reserved

site designed and maintained by albert calascione

CINEMA IN SICILIA

While only a few films used the Eolian Islands for their locations, Sicily itself has provided the greater panorama and inspiration for filmmakers from around the world. Perhaps the most internationally well known films shot in Sicily is Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather, based on Mario Puzo's famous mafia novel, Coppola returned to Sicily to film sequences for Godfather II and III.

Although several foreign directors have made movies in Sicily, the Italians by far have left the greatest cinematic impressions of the island.

Michael Cimino's The Sicilian (1987), also adapted from a Puzo novel, is loosely based on the life of Salvatore Giuliano, Sicily's great folk hero. Francesco Rosi's earlier film, Salvatore Giuliano (1961), is a far more truthfully told and much finer film than Cimino's beautifully shot, but ultimately disappointing film.

The Eolian Islands have served as backdrops for a number of notable films, their isolation often reflecting or underlining a film's theme or the isolation of its characters. In 1949, Roberto Rossellini went to the archipelago to film Stromboli, terra di Dio (Stromboli), starring Ingrid Bergman. During the filming Rossellini and Bergman began their highly publicized affair.

Impanata Gattopardo - timballo di maccheroni

The burnished gold of the crust and the fragrance of sugar and cinnamon that exuded, were only a prelude to the sensation of delight released from the interior when the knife slit the crust; first came a steaming burst of aromas, then chicken livers, hard-boiled eggs, slices of ham, chicken and truffles in masses of hot, glistening macaroni, to which the meat juice gave an exquisite velvety brown hue.

Francesco Rosi, a native of Napoli, brought the story of Salvatore Giuliano (1961) to the screen in an uncompromising view of the effect of the bandit's life. He centered the plot around the investigation following Giuliano's death in 1950 and focuses on the power struggle between Sicilian separatists, the Allies, Mafia, and state officials. This real-life myth proves to be the source for a powerfully dramatic film which earned Rosi international status.

Pietro Germi made several films in Sicily, beginning with the neorealist, western-style In nome delle legge (In the Name of the Law), but is best known for the satiric Divorzio all'italiana (Divorce Italian Style) of 1961, starring Marcello Mastroianni. Germi returned to Sicily in after Divorzio to make another dark comedy, Sedotta e abbandonata (Seduced and Abandoned) in 1963.

Based on several Pirandello short stories, the Taviani brothers' Kaos (1983) was filmed in Sicily and Lipari.

Michael Radford’s warmly touching Il Postino (1994), filmed almost entirely on the island of Salina, has some breathtaking scenes shot around the village of Pollara and the beach below.

Michelangelo Antonioni filmed the first half of his exquisite masterpiece, L’Avventura (1960) in Sicily and off the coast of Panarea on the nearby island of Lisca Bianca.

The 'Islands' sequence in Nanni Moretti's amusing Caro Diario (1994) follows Moretti and his friend as they hop around the Eolian Islands while persuing their own quirky, personal odyssey.

Filmmaker Luchino Visconti, the great opera and theater director, went to Sicily in 1947 to make his second film, La terra trema (The Earth Trembles), which he based on the Giovanni Verga story, The House by the Medlar Tree.

Visconti returned to Sicily two decades later to film his beautifully grand adaptation of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's classic novel of the Risorgimento, Il Gattopardo (The Leopard).

The film depicts the decline of the aristocracy in light of Italy's changing social and political order during the 1860s. The understanding Don Fabrizio sums up the heart of the story:

If we want everything to remain as it is, it will be necessary for everything to change... All this shouldn't last; but it will, always; the human 'always,' of course, a century, two centuries... and after that it will be different but worse. We were the Leopards, the Lions; those who'll take our place will be little jackals, hyenas; and the whole lot of us Leopards, jackals, and sheep, we'll all go on thinking ourselves the salt of the earth. --from The Leopard, by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

Marco Tullio Giordana's I Cento Passi (The Hundred Steps) pays homage to the memory of Peppino Impastato, who waged a campaign against the Mafia in his hometown of Cinisi near Palermo. During the ‘70s, Peppino and his friends set up a radio station on which they broadcast anti-mafia diatribes, which possibly caused the death of his father, and eventually cost Peppino his life as well. I cento passi is compelling cinema and a moving account of Impastato's impassioned struggle to liberate his family and his hometown from the iron grip of the Mafia.

Also based on fact is Placido Rizzotto, a stunningly brilliant and suspenseful film written and directed by Pasquale Scimeca. In the late '40s, Rizzotto, a trade-union leader, mysteriously disappeared after a number of confrontations with the Mafia over their control of the land surrounding Corleone.

Placido Rizzotto's bullet riddled remains were eventually discovered in a pit outside of Corleone. This rigorous film takes a stark, altogether unromantic view of the Sicilian Mafia. The excellent film score was composed by the Sicilian group, Agricantus.

Sicilian director Giuseppe Tornatore's popular Cinema Paradiso was filmed around Palermo. His more recent Malèna, was filmed in several locations in eastern Sicily, including Messina, Siracusa, Noto and Taormina, and his earlier Star Maker around Ragusa.

Visconti's film is one of the landmarks of Italian neorealist cinema and remarkable for its use of non-actors to convey the plight of fishermen from the coastal village of Aci Trezza.

Il Gattopardo is Visconti’s masterpiece and is one of the great Italian films. Burt Lancaster gives perhaps his finest, most noble performances as Don Fabrizio, the Prince of Salina.