Books and Films Set in Lombardy
1. I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed)
Written in the 1800s, Alessandro Manzoni’s novel is a window into Lombard life in the 1600s, set in Milan and Manzoni’s Lake Como home town of Lecco during Spanish rule. It is required reading for all Italian schoolchildren and has been translated into many languages.
2. A Farewell to Arms
Ernest Hemingway’s World War I novel (written in 1929) tells the story of an American soldier wounded while fighting for the Italian army. He convalesces in a Milan hospital, and, after inadvertently deserting while escaping the Germans, reunites with his love in Stresa on Lake Maggiore. They stay at the Grand Hôtel des Iles Borromées (where Hemingway himself often stayed), then flee by boat across to Swiss Locarno.
3. Twilight in Italy
The first place D H Lawrence and his lover Frieda settled during their European peregrinations was the shores of Lake Garda, during the winter of 1912–13. In 1916, he compiled his notes on those happy first months spent in Italy and wrote this travelogue.
4. A Month by the Lake
It’s 1937, and a group of stodgy society Brits and bored Yanks loosen their mores and inhibitions on the shores of Lake Como. Vanessa Redgrave and Uma Thurman head up the cast of this 1995 film by John Irvin. You can visit its setting, the Villa Balbianello.
5. Miracle in Milan
Vittorio de Sica’s 1951 fable of a magical dove that grants wishes to the inhabitants of a Milan slum uses an early version of “special effects”, bridging the popular Neo-Realistic style of Italy’s post-war cinema with the era of magical realism in film-making that Fellini would make famous.
6. A Traveller in Italy
H V Morton, who in his youth gained fame scooping the story of Tutankhamun’s tomb discovery in the 1920s, became one of the 20th-century’s best, if little-known, travel writers. His 1950s journey through Italy is an erudite combination of travelogue, history and wonderful prose, much of it surprisingly undated.
7. La Notte
Film director Michelangelo Antonioni takes the slow death of affection between a couple, masterfully played by Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau, and sets it against a backdrop of rapidly industralizing Milan in 1960.
8. Theorem
Pier Paolo Pasolini’s usual mix of sex, homosexuality and a communist critique on the emptiness of bourgeois life defines this 1968 film. Handsome stranger Terence Stamp raises the libidos of a middle-class Milanese family, then further stirs up their lives by disappearing.
9. The Spider’s Stratagem
Before gaining international fame, Bernardo Bertolucci made this 1969 story of a dysfunctional family haunted by the Fascist past. He set this psychological drama in the quirky town of Sabbioneta.
10. Casino Royale
The beautiful grounds of Villa Balbianello on Lake Como featured in this James Bond film in 2006. Fans can also check out the famous Villa Gaeta, the location for the last scene in the movie. This private house in Art Nouveau style lies between Menaggio and Dongo, and is best seen from the ferry boat.
