GOODBYE TUSCANY, THE LAND OF THE GREATEST DREAMS

A Room with a View, 1985

The Grandma wants to talk about some films that have been filmed in Tuscany a land of dreams.

There are so many ways to visit a place, to travel, to see things. There are different atmospheres. And there are different points of view.

This time we invite you to discover Tuscany through the lens of a film camera, one of the many film cameras that have come here to immortalize Tuscany's cities and landscapes, which have become  the  perfect background for small, great, famous, legendary sequences: the old black and white one or the more recent coloured one; the one that made us laugh, the one that scared us, the one that made us dream of Tuscany!

Famous film directors as Ron Howard, Roberto Benigni, Kenneth Branagh and Matteo Garrone chose Tuscany as a movie set. Their stories have left an indelible mark and have become real itineraries for travellers to follow. Today we choose their fantastic stories to explore some of the hidden beauties of Tuscany.

 

Tea with Mussolini is a 1999 British-Italian film directed by Franco Zeffirelli, featuring Maggie Smith and Cher. It tells the story of a young Italian boy raised among a circle of British and American women living in Italy before and during the Second World War. Florence and San Gimignano are the main locations, other than the Cinecittà Studios in Rome (Latium).

Life Is Beautiful, in Italian La Vita è bella, is a 1997 Italian film which tells the story of a Jewish man, Guido Orefice -played by Roberto Benigni, who also directed and co-wrote the film-, who wants to help his family with the help of his immagination during their internment in a Nazi concentration camp.

At the 71st Academy Awards in 1999, Benigni won the Academy Award for Best Actor and the film won both the Oscar for the Best Original Drama Score and for the Best Foreign Language Film.

Tea with Mussolini, 1999

Under the Tuscan Sun by Audrey Wells (2003) is a rom com that tells the story of Frances Mayes (Diane Lane) who, leaving from San Francisco, moves to Tuscany after her sudden divorce and decides to buy an old house in Cortona.

In a trip to Rome she meets Marcello (Raoul Bova) and it's up to you to see what happens next.

The Best of Youth, in Italian La Meglio Gioventù, is a 2003 Italian film directed by Marco Tullio Giordana. Originally planned as a four-part series, it was presented at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival where it won the prestigious Un Certain Regard award. The Best of Youth is a family saga set in Italy in the period that goes from 1966 to 2003. It focuses primarily on two brothers on their journey from their adolescence in the mid-1960s, to parenthood and retirement in the early 2000s.

The film aims to show the strong interaction between the story of the nation and the personal events of the single individuals of the tail. Some scenes are set in Florence to recreate the bad times of the big flood in 1966.

More information: Visit Tuscany

Stealing Beauty, in Italian Io ballo da sola, is a 1996 drama film directed and written by Academy Awarded filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci, with Liv Tyler, Jeremy Irons, and Rachel Weisz. Lucy, an American teenage girl, is sent to Italy by her widow father after the loss of her mother. Here, she stays with a couple of family friends in a farmhouse in the surroundings of Siena. Her arrival will upset the balance of the hosts and she soon understands that this trip is going to change her life and make her grow.

Hannibal is a famous psychological thriller directed in 2001 by Ridley Scott and adapted from the Thomas Harris's novel bearing the same name. It is a sequel to the 1991 Academy Awarded film The Silence of the Lambs that features the return of the great Anthony Hopkins to his iconic role as the serial killer Hannibal Lecter, face to face with Jodie Foster in the role of the FBI Agent Clarice Starling.

Set ten years after the previous one, the premise is that Dr. Lecter's only survived victim -acted by Gary Oldman- is determined to capture, torture, and kill him. The film locations alternate Florence with the U.S.

Hannibal, 2011

The English Patient is a 1996 romantic-dramatic film based on the novel by the Sri Lankan-Canadian writer Michael Ondaatje. The film, written for the screen and directed by Anthony Minghella, won nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture. The Tuscan locations are in Arezzo and Pienza.

In the last days of the Italian campaign of World War II, a French-Canadian nurse -interpreted by Juliette Binoche- works and lives in a safe Italian monastery. She looks after a critically burned man (Ralph Finnes) who speaks English but cannot remember his name, that's why she calls him the English Patient.

A Room with a View is a 1985 British drama film directed by James Ivory. The film is a close adaptation -but different in the ending part- of E. M. Forster's novel bearing the same name.

Set in England and Florence, the movie is about a young woman named Lucy Honeychurch (Helena Bonham Carter) in the restrictive culture of the Edwardian Era in England and about her developing love for free-spirited young George Emerson.

More information: Slow Italy

Gladiator is an historical epic film directed in 2000 by Ridley Scott, starring Russell Crowe and Joaquin Phoenix.

The Roman general Maximus Decimus Meridius is betrayed and his family murdered by an emperor's corrupt son, so he comes to Rome as a gladiator to seek revenge.

It was a box office success, receiving generally positive reviews. The film was multi awarded -five Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Although there have been talks of both a prequel and sequel, but no production have begun.

The Twilight Saga is a series of 5 American romance fantasy film started in 2008 and based on Stephenie Meyer's 2006 vampire novel New Moon. Directed by Chris Weitz with the stars Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, in the roles as Bella Swan and Edward Cullen. Some important scenes of the second episode were setted in Volterra, within the streets and alleys of its fourteenth century historical center.

Volterra has always been influenced by the Legend of the Volturi, which has been passed down over generations and recently representented in this famous Saga.

Inferno, 2015

Filmed in Florence in 2015, Inferno is a mystery thriller film directed by Ron Howard, based on the 2013 novel of the same name by Dan Brown. The movie is the sequel to The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons, and stars Tom Hanks, reprising his role as Robert Langdon.

Robert Langdon wakes up in a hospital room in Florence with no memory of what has transpired over the last few days. To solve the riddle he runs through some of the most popular sites in Florence together with Sienna Brooks (Felicity Jones): from the Boboli Gardens to the Vasari Corridor, from the Uffizi, passing through Palazzo Vecchio to finally reach the Baptistery. 

For those interested in guided tours, Palazzo Vecchio organizes a 75 minutes Inferno tour in the footsteps of Robert Langdon.

Kenneth Branagh chose Vignamaggio, in Greve in Chianti, as the setting for his adaptation of the comedy Much Ado About Nothing (1993), based on William Shakespeare’s story, starring Kenneth Branagh, Emma Thompson, Denzel Washington, Michael Keaton and Keanu Reeves.

Today a wine estate and agriturismo, Villa Vignamaggio is known by locals as Monnalisa’s villa. Built in 1400 by the powerful and rich Gherardini family, it was perhaps once home to Lisa Gherardini -Leonardo’s Gioconda. Although there are no proof about this fact, we like to imagine the beautiful Lisa walking through the orchards, with her little smile, enjoying one of the finest views of Tuscany.

Lost in Florence (previously titled The Tourist) is a 2017 romantic drama film written and directed by Evan Oppenheimer and starring Brett Dalton, Stana Katic, Alessandra Mastronardi, Marco Bonini, Alessandro Preziosi and Emily Atack. The sport played in the film is Calcio Fiorentino, an archaic form of soccer that has been played in Florence since the sixteenth century.

More information: Visit Florence

Every time I go to a new place, more likely than not,

I end up seeing an opera there.

It's ended up being a part of travel.

Stana Katic