"Marcello...Marcello, come here!" ran Anita Ekberg's unforgettable invitation to Marcello Mastroianni to join her in the Trevi Fountain in the small hours of the morning. It is, perhaps, one of the most famous scenes in cinema (it is in Fellini's La Dole Vita - in case there is anyone who may not know). The film turned the fountain supplied by "Acqua Vergine" into a tourist landmark. The Rimini-born Federico Fellini was not the only director to shoot in Rome. Far from it: for decades Rome has been one of the preferred locations for all genres of film. According to theInternet Movie Database more than 400 films have been shot in the city. Directors and cinema designers have found a ready-made set in the ancient and modern streets and buildings of Rome. One such film that comes to mind is Fantasmi a Roma (Ghosts of Rome) in which Marcello Mastroianni and Vittorio Gassman (the two ghosts of the title) try to save their haunt from demolition by building speculators. Fortunately, the old house is still standing, right next to Santa Maria della Pace, a stone's throw from Piazza Navona. Just five minutes away is the "talking notice board" on which "Cornacchia" (by day the shoemaker Nino Manfredi), used to attach his written invectives against the Pope. The statue is called the Pasquino and it appears in the film Nell'anno del Signore directed by Luigi Magni. The film is set in 1825, a year in which, as it happens, the Church was celebrating a Jubilee. On the other side of Corso Vittorio Emanuele II from the Pasquino and Piazza Navona are areas used by the director Jane Campion for the shooting of The Portrait of a Lady. Although the film version of Henry James's work of psychological subtlety is set in late 19th-century England, much of the filming took place in one of the handsome buildings around Piazza Farnese. Rome forms the center stage for a fifties classic, Roman Holiday, in which Audrey Hepburn plays a princess who flees her palace and, courted by Gregory Peck playing a reporter, wanders through the streets of the city. There is a memorable scene in which the two meet on the Spanish Steps. A film that made full use of the scenery of the city was Peter Greenway's The Belly of the Architect, in which the buildings of the city form the central element rather than just the background of the work. The British director pays tribute to a monument that has often been the object of criticism: the Altar of the Fatherland, also known as the "Vittoriano" or the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The monument is seen from a perspective that few have enjoyed - though it seems the monument will sooner or later be opened to the general public to explore as Greenway has done. Michelangelo Antonioni was inspired by some of the 20th-century architecture of the city. The rationalist architecture of EUR forms the backdrop to his story of the tormented relationship between Monica Vitti and Alain Deloin in The Eclipse. The scenes in the film emulate the essential and geometrical style of the imposing buildings of EUR built by the Fascist regime.
