Anonimo Veneziano

Since I will be in Venice soon, to visit friends, to enjoy its timeless beauty and also to check the "Biennale", I feel I should share this with you!

"Anonimo Veneziano" an award winning drama is one of my favorite movies and I could watch it many times over. It was filmed in 1970 by Enrico Maria Salerno (a very famous Italian theater actor at the time) in his debut as a director in a magnificent Venice without tourists as a background (and should I say foreground too).

Listen to the music... and enjoy some images of the city.

Salerno's script, co-written with Giuseppe Berto, features Tony Musante and Florinda Bolkan as an estranged couple reunited for a day. They wander around Venice reminiscing about the ups and downs of their marriage, wondering what drove them apart. Extraordinary photography of the best Venice has to offer, some scenes were also filmed at the centuries old Bevilacqua Textiles factory, where Bolkan was surrounded by the most luxurious damasks and silks in an explosion of colors.
The most fascinating music "Adagio from Oboe concert" by Alessandro Marcello (1669-1747 and brother of Benedetto) makes some scenes even more romantic.

A real Venice, a hymn to desperate love, a man dying in a dying city...a movie, at least for me,

 impossible to forget.

From the movie script:
"Do you really fear the past?"
"No, it is not the past...it is that I can't tolerate anymore the smell of this city. She is dying, she is going back to mud...but it is just this that makes her beautiful: she is dying".
The same year (1970) we had "Love story" movie (another impossible, desperate love) which I saw once and never felt like I have to see again...it must be my fascination with Venice or the intensity of this particular movie or perhaps just the memory of who I was at the time!!!

On a more prosaic note:

When in Venice I always go once to "Locanda Montin" Dorsoduro 1147 where a famous scene of the movie was taken. A good restaurant with local specialties and a charming atmosphere, especially if in season you can sit in the courtyard under the canopy of greenery.

Very romantic indeed... and the distance between tables allows intimate conversation...

You may also like to read:
Venice Biennale