Italian filmmakers from here and abroad
Most of the great Italian names have been conquered by the landscapes and the unique architecture of the region. Its history, especially the murderous episodes of the First World War where Italian and Austro-Hungarian troops clashed, has inspired many dramas. Mario Monicelli's La Grande Guerra (1959) is a tribute to these fighters and to the beautiful region of Udine, as well as being a great film. A few years later, the great Pier Paolo Pasolini shot Medea in the region, which was released in 1969. Inspired by the Greek myth that came down to us through the text of Euripides, the director delivers a dark version of the story of this woman who is madly in love with Jason, but who then sinks into madness until murdering her own children. Maria Callas, a great singer of the time, plays the heroine, while Jason appears as Giuseppe Gentile, an Italian actor who was also a world record holder in the triple jump at the 1968 Olympics
The lagoon of Grado and its casoni, fishermen's houses scattered around this splendid lake, charmed Pasolini who established the village of his centaur there. A few years after this filming, it was Luchino Visconti's turn to set his camera in Trieste for the superb Death in Venice (1971). Although the action of this captivating drama adapted from the work of Thomas Mann takes place mainly in the lakeside city, Visconti used the Campo Marzio train station to represent the Venice train station. Today a museum dedicated to the history of the regional railroad, you can discover many trains still in working order, and perhaps even board one of these collector's items. It will take you back to the strange atmosphere of this great Italian film from the 1970s
Trieste is also the star of its own film in La ragazza di Trieste, by author Pasquale Festa Campanile (1982). Adapting his own novel published the previous year, the filmmaker portrays an aging artist who finds in this mysterious girl a new muse, even though she seems to be hiding a dark secret.
More recently, the new generation of Italian filmmakers has seized the Venetian landscape to establish comic stories(Tolo Tolo by Checco Zalone, 2020), love stories(Il giorno più bello by Massimo Cappelli, 2006) or fantastic adventures(Il ragazzo invisibile by Gabriele Salvatores, 2014), with varying degrees of success with the Italian public. Among these, it is worth highlighting the work of the Sicilian Giuseppe Tornatore, who shot two films in the region. The Unknown (2006), a drama about a young Ukrainian woman caught up in a prostitution ring, was made entirely in Trieste. You can recognize the Palazzo delle Assicurazioni Generali, but also the city's shopping streets and the park of Villa Revoltella. Acclaimed by national and international critics, The Unknown won five David di Donatello, the Italian Oscars, before winning the Audience Award at the Chicago Film Festival and the Audience Award at the European Film Awards. Tornatore continues to pursue a career rich in nuggets, with European and international stars. In 2013, he returned to Trieste to direct The Best Offer (2013), a suspenseful tale about a gallery owner played by Geoffrey Rush. Piazza Guglielmo Oberdan and Via Guido Corsi appear in the film, while part of the action takes place in the beautiful Villa Mainardis in Gorizzo, an idyllic place that is now a renowned agriturismo. Finally, we cannot be complete without mentioning the drama series La porta rossa (2017-), a quality crime drama mixing fantasy and thriller, also shot in Trieste.
When international cinema is infatuated with the confines of Italy
Like the Italian productions, the international shootings are closely linked to the historical and political context of the region. The great adaptation of Ernest Hemingway 's A Farewell to Arms , directed by Charles Vidor and John Huston (1957) with Rock Hudson in the lead role, was filmed in Venzone for its first few minutes, before travelling around Italy as the story unfolds. In 1996, the war will again be the subject of a great Hollywood film, The English Patient, by the Englishman Anthony Minghella. Filmed between Tuscany and Veneto, with a stop in Trieste, this work with an impressive cast (Ralph Fiennes, Juliette Binoche, Willem Dafoe, Kristin Scott Thomas and Colin Firth) won no less than nine Oscars, including the one for best film. A must-see not only for the beautiful views of the city it offers, but also for its poignant love story.
In another register, another figure of Anglo-Saxon literature also stops in Trieste, James Bond. In Killing is not playing (1987), it is Timothy Dalton puts on for the first time the tuxedo of 007, in the heart of a story where the Cold War still has its place. Traveling between Vienna, Kosovo, Morocco and the United States, Bond also ventures into the Passo di Pramollo, on the heights of Udine, for a chase that only the saga has the secret. Finally, how can we miss the mythical Godfather II (1974), shot between Italy and the United States? Instead of the immigration office at Ellis Island, the old market of the Pescheria Centrale, on the Trieste riviera, was used as the location for this key scene in Francis Ford Coppola's masterpiece.
Since the 2000s, series and films have regularly stopped in Friuli Venezia Giulia, attracted by the aid of the Regional Commission that supports the economy and production in its territories. Naomi Watts, for example, has been seen in Piazza Unità d'Italia and in the Caffè degli Specchi, where she was shooting Diana (2013), as well as Ewan McGregor, playing James Joyce in Nora (2000). Most recently, the series Borgias (2014) has established its headquarters in two of the castles of the region, in Villalta and Gorizia. Proof of the architectural diversity of the region, which you can discover through these many films
