this is a surprisingly poor film by the normally brilliant billy wilder. it stars a surprisingly annoying jack lemmon who, in what perhaps was once innovative but now is only somewhat sad, is filmed naked for a few minutes (and he has one of the ugliest flat asses ever to be seen on screen).
so why do i mention this flick at all? because cutch is paying me for this moderator job, for one. but also: the movie is set on the italian island of ischia, in the gulf of naples, in the year 1972. i just spent a week there and the funny thing is that nothing has changed. they still drive those odd three-wheeled two-stroke minitrucks and girls show their legs whilst driving vespa scooters.
the landscape is incredibly beautiful and the food as good as you could hope in italy, i.e. just great. things close down every mid-day for three hours; everybody goes for a constitutional and meets at the piazza around 8 pm; there are children and grandparents and loud arguments and people laughing everywhere. it's enough to make you wonder what ever happened to good old depressiveness. so if you ever see that movie on TV, remember i told you that even though it shows a stilted and clichéd version of reality, it is not so far from the truth.
oh and by the way, to give you a contrasting example of what has changed, i met one evening in the bar of my hotel a lady who proudly stated she was britain's first female porn director. we spent some amusing hours discussing such topics as the sociology of money shots, the aesthetics of water sports, and ron jeremy (she said he smells, which i know is a little more information than you might have wanted, but what the hell).