Director Stanley Kramer's 1970 comedy "The Secret of Santa Vittoria" is now streaming on Amazon Prime. Until the late, great video company Twilight Time released the film on Blu-ray some years ago, I hadn't seen the movie since it was originally released and only had vague recollections of it. Watching it again, I found it to be an absolute delight thanks to a terrific script by Ben Maddow and William Rose (the latter co-wrote Kramer's "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World") and a sterling cast. The film is set in 1943 in the small Italian village of Santa Vittoria. The story opens with a young university studio, Fabio (Giancarlo Giannini in one of his first major roles) who hurries to his native town to breathtakingly inform the residents that Mussolini has just been deposed. The announcement is met with a collective yawn by the townspeople, who have remained largely immune from the effects of the war and their dictator's fascist police state. However, when the towns folk learn that German soldiers will be occupying Santa Vittoria, there is widespread concern. The town's one claim to fame is its production of popular wines which are exported in massive numbers. Everyone in town depends in some way on the revenues from the wine sales and it becomes apparent that the German army intends to confiscate the town's precious inventory. Through happenstance, a local wine merchant, Bombolini (Anthony Quinn) has been appointed mayor. He is regarded as an idiot by everyone including his long-suffering wife Rosa (Anna Magnani), who has grown weary over the decades of trying to cope with his laziness and regular bouts of wine-fueled excesses. Recognizing that the seizure of the town's stockpile of wine will leave the locals destitute, Bombolini devises a seemingly preposterous plan to leave enough wine on hand to satisfy the Germans that they have secured the lion's share of the inventory. Meanwhile, prior to their arrival, the entire town will participate in a massive effort to hide the bulk of the inventory in a local cave and then have a wall constructed to hide the stash. The plan proves surprisingly effective and Bombolini emerges as an unlikely leader, who rallies the locals in the Herculean effort that involves hundreds of townspeople forming seemingly endless lines in which people painstakingly pass hundreds of thousands of bottles from hand to hand one-by-one.
When the German forces finally arrive, they are under the command of Capt. von Prum (Hardy Kruger). He is a civil, even charming, fellow who nevertheless makes it clear to Bombolini that he is no fool. von Prum has anticipated that substantial wine bottles are hidden somewhere but Bombolini, who puts on a respectable act of being a fawning, spineless civil servant, adamantly denies the charge. The tenuous situation is made more dangerous when von Prum turns his attentions to romancing a local beauty, a cultured woman named Caterina (Virna Lisi), who reluctantly plays along with him because she doesn't want to incur his wrath. Seems she is secretly hiding her real lover, an Italian army deserter, Tufa (Sergio Franchi). It seems Bombolini is winning the war of wills but before the Germans can depart with the stores of wine, the Gestapo arrives with evidence that a cache has indeed been hidden. The frolicking good times seem over for the townspeople when von Prum's methods are overruled in favor of torture.
The Secret of Santa Vittoria is a truly underrated gem with one of those glorious, scenery-chewing performances that only Anthony Quinn could successfully pull off without looking hammy. He's in full Zorba mode here, turning the lowly and discredited town idiot into a figure of courage and nobility. Quinn is more than matched by Anna Magnani as his fiery-tongued wife. They are like an Italian version of Ralph and Alice Kramden, constantly trading barbs and insults in sequences that are genuinely amusing. It's also fun watching the scenes in which the beleaguered Bombolini must also deal with his teenage daughter's (Patrizia Valturri) raging hormones and her quest to lose her virginity to her student lover, Fabio. Director Kramer is at his best and the sequences in which the townspeople join together to hide the wine are almost epic in scope. It's a touching, funny and moving film that is set to a fabulous score by frequent Kramer collaborate Ernest Gold.