The Secret of Santa Vittoria
I write this in the middle of the 2020 COVID-19 quarantine. So it's possible my entertainment standards have loosened drastically. And of course I'm severely biased in favor of a story in which an Italian town risks everything, even their own lives, to save a million bottles of local wine from the Germans during WWII.
But with those caveats I will boldly assert that I'd recommend The Secret of Santa Vittoria, which you can stream with an Amazon Prime membership, to any wine lover or lovers of movies. It's charming, colorful, sentimental, and delightful.
To paraphrase the movie itself, "It's not a great movie, but it isn't bad."
I hate reviews with spoilers, so I won't recap the entire plot, but here's the premise: the people of a gorgeous hilltop town in Italy during WWII discover the Germans will arrive by the end of the week to take the main source of income for the town - over a million bottles of their local wine - and they must find a way to come together to hide most of the wine and outsmart the Germans.
In the quest to save their wine the townsfolk must toil and sacrifice, test everything they hold sacred, and even risk their own souls. It is a story of bravely holding on to what is most important in life, to a cause that is larger than any individual, even if it means giving up your individual life.
By the end, The Secret of Santa Vittoria makes us ask ourselves, "What kind of people are you?!" What kind of courage do we have? What do we value more than ourselves and our own agendas?
If "wine" fits into your answer of those questions somehow, then you'll probably love this movie.
This movie has a sense of humor. It has a sense of history. It has passion.
And it has wine. Lots of wine.
For a movie released in 1969 it is surprisingly not cringe-worthy for the most part, and could even be commended for some complex and strong female roles (even if it wouldn't quite pass the Bechdel test). There are some frank and unapologetic admissions of (if not celebration of) female sexuality and sexual liberty as well.
The Secret of Santa Vittoria is filmed almost entirely on location in Anticoli Corrado, a town in the mountains east of Rome that is as rich in local, ancient charm as in beautiful scenery. Nearly every shot is delicious.
There are several relationships and subplots that keep the story interesting throughout, and add the real depth to the otherwise comedic tone of the "hide the wine" A-story. If you liked Chocolat (with Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp), you'll probably like The Secret of Santa Vittoria just as much if not more.
I know I gave caveats, and this isn't a ringing endorsement of the movie. I think that's appropriate to its own sensibilities, which are substantive while understated. But The Secret of Santa Vittoria actually won the Golden Globe for Best Musical or Comedy, and received a couple technical Oscar nominations... so it's got some cred.
I hope you get a chance to see this lovely old movie and let it take you on, if not a quest, at least a charming adventure. It may not change you, but I think it will delight you. I think the point of the movie is that there is something worth cherishing in the simple delights that make up our simple lives, like a bottle of wine.
Or a million of them.
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