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compulsory #22

Compulsory Employee Movie Review #22

I Luv employee Marc raises his glass to toast the movie The Secret of Santa Vittoria

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Stanley Kramer did everything he could to keep old Hollywood a part of cinema in the 1960s. Young whipper snappers

were infiltrating the Academy making movies like the Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde, and dirty hippies were weaseling

themselves in with things like Easy Rider. Kramer steadfastly created traditional movies for the more conservative crowd.

Judgment at Nuremberg, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner were all solid, if a bit

conventional. After the Academy slobbered over the last one, a movie ten years behind the race-relation curve, Stanley

took his clout and turned it into another neo-traditionalist goldmine: the Secret of Santa Vittoria.

Anthony Quinn plays Bombolini, the village drunk of a WWII-era Italian mountain town, Santa Vittoria. The fun-loving,

wine-producing community drunkenly elects Bombolini mayor during the celebration of Mussolini's demise. Their sauced

revelry soon ends when word comes down that Mussolini's absence will be filled by Nazis, intent on taking Santa

Vittoria's million bottles of wine. (Yes, that number is accurate; actually, it's a little short.) So now, a drunken town

with a drunken leader must come up with a plan to outwit the Nazis and save their livelihood. It's pretty sweet.

The film runs a bit long, but Quinn is fantastic as Italo Bombolini and the whole town has that charming,

un-wartime-during-wartime quality you only get in those old-style Hollywood films. Almost every actor outside of

Quinn is a leathery-looking Italian, giving authenticity to the otherwise ridiculous situation of locals speaking English

with Italian accents. And look out for character-actor, Giancarlo Gianini as a young stud, mackin' it Italian-style.

Stanley Kramer may have faded from the limelight when the 70s cemented the rebirth of Hollywood – in fact, in

perfect metaphorical fashion, Midnight Cowboy won Best Picture the year Santa Vittoria was released – but

throughout his career, he made some stellar pictures worth watching. From the Defiant Ones to Inherit the Wind

and many others, Kramer was an important part of the changing of the guard in Hollywood and

The Secret of Santa Vittoria functions perfectly as a bookend to the switch.

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