Watch The Secret of Santa Vittoria For Free

How sad is this?

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

When casting this film there was only one actor possible for the lead. It could only have been Anthony Quinn playing lead character and town drunk of Santa Vittorio, Bombolini. The way Quinn plays him so broadly it could only have been the guy who brought Zorba The Greek to the big screen.When new of the fall of Mussolini's government the town celebrates as most of the town's did until Kesselring's troops occupied them. Because Quinn got himself totally plastered and stuck on a 100 foot water tower taking down pro-Mussolini signs the Fascist council thinks he's the popular leader and they make the town drunk mayor.All a big joke to the one who knows him best wife Anna Magnani. They have what could be considered a tempestuous relationship. The only kind Magnani ever had on the screen. These scenes have some real bite to them because Quinn and Magnani did not get along at all during the making of The Secret Of Santa Vittoria.What is that secret you ask? It is the fact that the town which is in the grape growing wine pressing part of Italy has squirreled away much of its wine from the Fascist government. Now however the Nazis threaten to occupy the town and Quinn and the rest of the town have to get real creative in their hiding.They do and Quinn and Wehrmacht commander Hardy Kruger have quite a battle of wits. The German officer and the town drunk. Who do you think comes out on top?The Secret Of Santa Vittoria is mostly a comedy, but it gets close to serious once the Germans arrive. Kruger has one of his most interesting parts in his career. He's a lot like Hannes Messemer who was the German Wehrmacht commander in The Great Escape. Kruger too has the S.S. looking over his shoulder.Watch the film as you see this battle of wits between Quinn and Kruger. Lots of laughs along the way as you see whether Santa Vittoria keeps its wine.

The film is set in Italy and begins just after the Italians surrender to the Allies during WWII. At first, the town is ecstatic--they are free and the fascists leaders quickly surrender the town to a man they designate the new mayor, Bombolini (Anthony Quinn). Bombolini seems ill-prepared, however, when the town learns that the Germans are coming--and will be occupying the town. However, a bright young man (Giancarlo Giannini) comes up with a great idea--to put all the town's wine in the Roman tunnels and then collapse the tunnels. That way, the Germans won't be able to steal the town's best resource. First, they need to move 1,000,000 bottles very quickly. Second, Bombolini needs to play nice to the German commander (Hardy Kruger) while also keeping the secret. Third, Bombolini needs to keep his nasty harpy of a wife (Anna Magnani) in line--and that might just be the most difficult task of all! So is the film any good? Of course. With Anthony Quinn in the lead, the film is naturally quite good--as he seems a natural. He is also ably assisted by a nice supporting cast and nice location shooting. However, the film is a bit odd. The first half was rather comical and light in mood. The final portion, with the Nazis, was very dark--and it drug a bit in tempo compared to the first part. Not a perfect film but a very good one.

Anthony Quinn looks like he is play "Zobra the Greek" again as a clownish Italian in director Stanley Kramer's predictable but entertaining comedy-drama "The Secret of Santa Vittoria," a World War II story that takes place in a hill town where wine is the chief virtue. There is a little too much comedy and not nearly enough edgy drama in this 139-minute film that won a Golden Globe.As the story unfolds, the citizens of Santa Vittoria rejoice when they learn that the tyrant dictator Mussolini has been deposed. The protagonist Italo Bombolini (Anthony Quinn) gets roaring drunk on wine and ascends the water tower to paint out a pro-Mussolini slogan that he had painted on the structure some 20 years ago. "Asphalt Jungle" scenarist Ben Maddow and "The Ladykillers" scribe William Rose based their uneven but okay screenplay on Robert Crichton's novel about a town that hides a million bottles of wine from the occupying forces of the German army.What makes this comedy-drama worth watching are the performances of Quinn, Anna Magnani, Virna Lisa, and Hardy Kruger. Initially, everybody thinks that Italo is a complete buffoon so they make him mayor. He surprises them and uses political theorist Niccolo Machiavelli's tract "The Prince" as a guide to his administration. Before long he has the entire town eating out of his hand with the sole exception of his harridan wife, Rosa (Anna Magnani of "The Red Rose"), who cannot stand the sight of him. A teenager named Fabio (Giancarlo Giannini of "Quantum of Solace") is in love with Italo's daughter, but he leaves the town so he can continue his education at the university. When he arrives at the university, Fabio learns that the Germans will occupy Santa Vittoria in a few week and most likely confiscate the town's supply of wine. He rides his bicycle back home and warns Italo, and the citizens scramble to hide the wine.Initially, they try to cart it off to a Roman cave, but all the carts seem to breakdown and there is a massive traffic jam in the town square. Reluctantly, Italo changes his plans and a Fascist deserter, Tufa (Sergio Franchi of "Curse of the Red Butterfly") tells him to use the entire town in the form of two human chains to hand the bottles of wine one-by-one to each other over a half-mile to get the wine safely to the Roman caves. Mind you, they have to pause because the citizens start to get careless and drop bottles. One of Italo's closest advisers suggests that Italo keep 300-thousand bottles of wine to give to the Nazis because they know the enemy will not believe them if they hide all of the wine.Eventually, they hide the wine and double-brick up the passageways. Captain von Prum (Hardy Kruger of "The Wild Geese") arrives with a small detachment of German troops and they occupy the town. Von Prum and Italo bargain about the percentage of wine that the town must give up to the Germans, while von Prum actively tries to romance Caterina Malatesta (Italian beauty Virna Lisa of "Queen Margot") who has fallen in love with the Fascist deserter. Everything looks rosy until the Gestapo show up and explain that the bookkeepers at the winery out-of-town calculate that over a million bottles of wine have not been accounted for.Von Prum spends 36 hours turning the town inside out, but he finds nothing. The Gestapo take two hostages and torture them in the Roman caves where the wine is hidden under their noses, but the hostages are Fascists who were being held captive by the townspeople. The Gestapo learn nothing from the discredited Fascists and the Germans leave Santa Vittoria and Italo Bombolini is celebrated as a hero and he wins a renewal of respect from his bitter wife.

Overblown and cartoonish "Secret..." is less a light comedy with earthy characters, as it's usually billed, than it is a loud and long drama for some left-wing theater company. Despite the renown of some of the actors (primarily Anthony Quinn and Anna Magnani) this movie suffers from over-acted cliche Italian characters and a central story line that offensively glosses over German atrocities in Italy during World War II.The action centers in the idealized Italian min-city state of Santa Vittoria--run by a drunk Mayor and peopled with stoic peasants--and the necessity to hide all the bottles of the local vino from the encroaching Nazis. There is very little substantive plot otherwise and what little there is is not worth waiting throw the over-dramatized pacing and staging. This is a real dud. Miss it or be warned!