Cinema

The Ibla area with its stunning landscapes has formed the backdrop for countless films over the decades, bringing the beauty of this corner of Sicily to the attention of the masses.

With the television series Inspector Montalbano, directed by Alberto Sironi and based of course on the novels by Andrea Camilleri, south-eastern Sicily has found its way into the hearts of millions of viewers around the world – with its golden beaches and blue skies, and its Baroque churches in Ragusa, Modica and Scicli, there is really no need to build a film set. Also not to be missed is Montalbano’s house at Punta Secca, a destination for countless tourists every year. Taking a step back into the past, there are a whole host of other films waiting to be discovered, such as Luigi Zampa’s 1948 neo-realist film Difficult Years (Italian: Anni difficili), adapted from Vitaliano Brancati’s novel Old Man in Boots (Italian: Il vecchio con gli stivali), shedding light on the stultifying conformism that prevailed during the years of transition from the Fascist era to the dawn of the Republic.

Corso Umberto, the façade of the church of St. Peter: the backdrop was Modica in the immediate postwar period, marking the debut of film-making in the Ragusa district. In 1961, another film crew arrived in Ragusa to shoot many of the sequences for Divorce, Italian Style (Italian: Divorzio all’italiana) with actors such as Marcello Mastroianni, Stefania Sandrelli, Daniela Rocca, Leopoldo Trieste and Lando Buzzanca.

In 1975, Zampa brought Franco Nero, Jennifer O’Neill, Orazio Orlando, James Mason and Franco Fabrizi to Ragusa to make the film The Flower in His Mouth (Italian: Gente di rispetto) based on a novel by Giuseppe Fava. This marked Zampa’s return to Ragusa after the experience of Difficult Years and he fell in love with Ibla, with its streets and squares, courtyards and Baroque façades. In the decade that followed, Ragusa remained a focal point of Sicilian film-making. In 1984, a year of great auteur cinema, Paolo and Vittorio Taviani chose the Hyblaean area for much of the filming of the movie Kaos, taken from a series of short stories by Sicily’s greatest writer, Luigi Pirandello.Ragusa Ibla and Giarratana, the stone-strewn lanes of its countryside, the silent courtyard of Modica’s town hall (or palazzo comunale), the charm of Ispica, the Gothic façade of Donnafugata Castle, its country villas – places that became the stars of the film as much as the cast. Over the next ten years, movie makers flocked here in their throngs.

The list of films made in the Hyblaean area opens with Vito Zagarrio’s La donna della luna (meaning Moon Lady) starring Greta Scacchi, a kind of Sicilian road movie that has a strong connection with the Ragusa coast. Ragusa’s seafront and beaches are also to be found in the Hyblaean sequences of Gianni Amelio’s The Stolen Children (Italian: Il ladro di bambini). Other highly prestigious titles are also worthy of mention. At the splendid Villa Fegotto, near Chiaramonte Gulfi, debut director Alberto Simone set several scenes for Moon Shadow (Italian: Colpo di luna) with Roman actor Nino Manfredi; and within a few months (1996), Roberto Faenza used the same locations for Marianna Ucria, from Dacia Maraini’s novel of the same name.

Oscar winner Giuseppe Tornatore’s film crews then spent weeks on end in Ragusa Ibla (as well as in Monterosso Almo and in other parts of the province) with grandiose sets for the most memorable scenes of The Star (Italian: L’uomo delle stelle), using local people as extras and capturing the colours, the lights and the hopes of the Hyblaean residents. Finally Maurizio Sciarra, with his The Room of the Scirocco (Italian: La stanza dello scirocco), based on the novel by Domenico Campagna, with Giancarlo Giannini and Tiziana Lodato, shot both inside Donnafugata castle and in the picturesque town of Monterosso Almo.