The Secret Of Santa Vittoria is available now on Blu-ray in a limited edition of 3000 copies from Twilight Time.
A young college student brings wonderful news to the small town square in Santa Vittoria, Italy: Mussolini has fallen from power! The vineyard town celebrates uproariously and in a drunken frenzy elect the clownish Italo Bombolini (Anthony Quinn) as their new mayor. When the wine wears off and Bombolini’s wife has finally kicked him out of the house for good, the whole town, Bombolini included, realize they’ve made a mistake AND that the Nazi army is headed their way; and will certainly confiscate their entire store of wine… the lifeblood of their town.
The Secret Of Santa Vittoria, based on a novel from Robert Crichton and produced and directed by Stanley Kramer, is a sweeping dramedy capturing a specific time and place in Italy. The film takes its time to establish its characters and tell its story, but features a number of wonderful moments and characters that make it a joy to watch, if possibly no more than a fascinating footnote in World War II storytelling.
Cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno took full advantage of filming on location in Italy, such that wherever he points his camera captures beauty. Early on Bombolini cements his clown status by climbing up the town water tower in a drunken stupor in order to remove some pro-Mussolini graffiti which he himself had once written. The town watches on as he must be rescued from the water tower by that same strapping young college student. His wife is mortified, but the audience is treated to grand shots of Italian countryside and hundreds of extras scattered throughout the town ancient town. Kramer seemed to spare little expense on this project, with breathtaking amounts of extras (all looking remarkably authentic), a beautiful town center as a major location, and a fairly large Nazi army motorcade. But as lush as the production was, this wasn’t your typical war film by any stretch of the imagination. As a matter of fact, for a film about the hiding of wine from an occupying German army… the Nazis don’t even roll into town until well over an hour into the runtime of the film. And I’m not willing to call that a problem, because that first hour spends a lot of time investing in our main characters and in the ultimate attempted redemption of Bombolini from clown town hero.
The political climate and limited capacity for the townspeople of Santa Vittoria to affect any real change on the world around them is an interesting angle for a war story. And that larger macro story juxtaposed against Bombolini’s attempts to reform and become the true mayor that his town needs offers a wonderfully intimate story against a much larger backdrop.
Perhaps the most interesting element of the story is the collective, improvised plan the town comes up with in order to save their livelihood from plunder by the Germans. With well over a million bottles of wine to hide, and the army only a few days away, Bombolini’s first great test is simply to get the wine hidden. The rest of the tests will involve keeping an entire town from blowing the secret under duress from the Nazis. And while the tension ratchets up exponentially once the Nazis, under the leadership of Capt. von Prum (Hardy Kruger in a wonderful performance that calls to mind Christoph Waltz in Inglorious Basterds), arrive and pressure the townspeople about the precious supply. But the most ingenious and cinematically wonderful sequence of the film involves the institution of an “assembly line” approach to moving the wine. Bombolini’s great improvisation is to line up the entire town from the store house down to the ancient Roman caves where they plan to build a false wall to hide the wine. This allows for a sequence unlike any I’ve ever seen before. Wide shots show hundreds of extras passing bottles back and forth, close ups show authentic Italian faces, young and old, and music is cut out so that only the faint clinking sounds of one million bottles can be heard. The improvisation of the whole town, rallying to save themselves from the plundering Germans, is exciting and inspiring. And the symbolism of wine as lifeblood, being “pumped” from the heart of the town, was powerful.
The film isn’t perfect, with the humor occasionally going far too broad and over the top. And at well over two hours, perhaps some trimming could have been done. But the rise of Bombolini juxtaposed against the slow degradation of von Prum eventually becomes rather harrowing as their game of cat and mouse turns dire and the fate of the town hangs in the balance.
Again I find myself discovering a title through Twilight Time which I never would have watched on my own, and which I’m grateful to have seen and experienced via this largely gorgeous Blu-ray. The package features only the isolated score, original trailer, and liner notes from Julie Kirgo. But the film itself is a unique experience providing entertainment, vast production value, and an authentic-feeling, thoroughly Italian tale in which war can somehow still bring about the best in people, and creative thinking in community can manage to save the day.
And I’m Out.