We’re making a fun addition to itinerary! On Friday, May 20, we’ll be visiting the Goldoni Museum in Venice for a special screening of the film Carlo Goldoni: Venice Grand Theatre of the World (Bettero, 2007). This docudrama, which will be subtitled in English, was shot on location in France and Venice and includes fictional scenes, interviews with contemporary actors and directors, and footage from Goldoni’s plays.

Carlo Goldoni with his European theatrical reform was a forerunner of the French Revolution: he did away with the character masks of the ”Commedia dell’Arte” of the time and revealed the true faces and emotions of the middle class in the Age of Enlightenment. In those days Venice was at the centre of a clash between the tradition of the ”Commedia dell’Arte”, the works of Carlo Gozzi, and the new theatre of Carlo Goldoni, or the so-called “theatre of character”, which had done away with masks, improvisation, classical myths, the gods, heroes, stories of unreal or fantastic characters, in favour of characters taken from real life, such as the middle classes, merchants and commoners, brought on to the stage and made to speak the language of ordinary people.

Goldoni’s reform provoked envy and rancour. And the conflicts that derived from these, often bitter, culminated on the occasion of the feast of Carnival of 1762: Goldoni’s last in Venice, before his departure for Paris, where he spent the last 31 years of his life.

The movie will be screened for us at the Goldoni Museum, which is located in the house where Goldoni was born, and will cost us only the museum ticket price. (Watch a 2-minute museum preview video here)

I think it’s going to be a great way to spend Friday evening away from the maddening crowds, and when we get out of the film we can all go to dinner with our imaginations full of extravagant 18th-century costumes and settings!

While talking to Terry about this class today, I suddenly remembered another manga/anime series besides Hetalia that refers to Venice — Aria, set in the early 24th century on the planet Aqua. In this highly praised series, 15-year-old Akari Mizunashi comes to the watery planet to learn how to become a gondolier in the tourist-ridden city of Neo-Venezia. It’s interesting, given our recent post on the struggle female gondoliers have been facing to be accepted in Venice, that all of her fellow “undines” (as they’re called in the series) are female, as well.

The city of Neo-Venezia was created in honor of the Earth city of Venice, which was destroyed, according to the series, in the 21st century.

The manga has been given high reviews for its quiet, introspective mood and beautiful artwork, and the equally lovely anime is available in English from Right Stuf (see official website). This illustration from the anime shows our heroines standing in Piazza San Marco next to the doge’s palace… but you recognized the setting already from browsing our photos, didn’t you?

Here’s the trailer, for anyone interested!

Even the Doctor thinks Venice is a pretty amazing city! Of course, much of this episode wasn’t actually filmed in Venice, but, hey, enjoy the footage that was.

In this scene, the Doctor expounds on some of the same reasons Terry and I think it’s worth taking a class of students to La Serenissima. Students, note the history and check out the famous view of San Giorgio! Of course, Terry and I don’t owe Casanova a chicken. Dare we even speculate about under what circumstances the Doctor came to owe Casanova a chicken? If he were Cpt. Jack Harkness, we might hazard a guess, but….

At any rate, our class will try to avoid running into any vampires on our trip. Although Venetian vampires do fit well into the “Venice as dying” and “Venice as immortal” themes of the course….

Sharks in Venice

Terry and I are taking our class preparation very seriously. Since one of our goals is to discuss depictions of Venice across all media, I, as the film theory half of the partnership, have been dutifully checking out various Venice-related movies with an eye toward using them to enhance our lectures.

As a result, while Terry was getting her abstract accepted for “The Renaissance of the Pilgrimage,” I rented Sharks in Venice (Lerner, 2008) and forced us both to watch it this weekend. Hmm. That may reflect poorly on how much I’m contributing to the course….

WARNING: SPOILERS!  What can one say to adequately describe this cinematic, er, feat? It stars Stephen Baldwin, Vanessa Johansson, Hilda van der Meulen, Giacomo Gonnella, and a great deal of stock footage of shark attacks. We think the director did, indeed, go to Venice to shoot footage, although we’re not entirely convinced that any of the actors ever set foot in Venice. We’re also not entirely convinced that anybody involved with the film is familiar with the term “continuity editor.” Pity, although it meant we did excitedly stop and back up the DVD several times during the movie to ensure that we did, indeed, see what we thought we saw. Like that leg Stephen Baldwin lost underwater that miraculously reappeared a scene later, without even the slightest mention of prostheses or months of physical therapy. Or the gondolier who wisely vanishes off the back of the gondola before the shark attack.

And I really need to buy my nephew the wetsuit capable of hiding a machine gun without any unsightly bulges and the mouthpiece that will allow him to talk underwater in voiceover.

My esteemed colleague insists that if we feed students enough pizza they’ll sit through an after-class screening of all 88 minutes of the film.  I’m not so certain. Maybe if we order enough grease-laden meat on the pizza, sheer digestive overload may keep them in their seats, in which case I hope they’ll take the time to work through the mangled logic of the villain’s master plan and then explain it to me.

Nevertheless, I think this movie has to become part of our lecture series. Maybe under “Venice as Symbol: Decadent and Dying.”

Now, where to put that gondola chase scene in Moonraker….