Hidden gems from the past: Italian spy-movies of the '60s
You may have heard the soundtracks, now get ready for the technicolor extravaganza of sixties Italy
Italian cinema has always been very quick to imitate famous Hollywood films.
When an American film became popular in Italy, Cinecittà - the Italian Hollywood - produced a series of films with the same theme, the same atmosphere, often with a similar title, but obviously with a lower budget.
In the '50s, after the success of Hollywood biblical films such as Ben Hur of The Ten Commandments, Italian producers invaded the cinemas with biblical B-movies. The plots were set in an unreal past, mixing religious episodes with mythology and adventure, featuring Samson and Hercules - more body-builders than actors - struggling with cruel and exotic "villains" to free beautiful princesses - more models than actresses.
The real actors were the unknown people who "dubbed" their voices, often with great results!
Following the vogue of James Bond films, in the mid Sixties we had a rush of spy-movies. These films were done one after another, often with the same actors, shooting two or three different films at the same time, such as Agente 077 missione Bloody Mary, Agente Speciale LK, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Agente 077 dall'Oriente con Furore, MMM Missione Morte Molo 83.
The amusing thing is that the actors and actresses, the directors and the titletrack singers were almost all Italian, but their names were "americanized" in order to make these films more realistic to the audience (!), like Ken Clark or Terence Hathaway - a mixture of Terence Fisher and Henry Hathaway.
The titles were similar, the plots were set in Paris, Beirut, Istanbul, exotic places not too far from Italy. The stories were similar, with secret agents (almost always with the number 7 in their names), beautiful unfaithful women, raw diamonds, black boxes, atomic secrets, crazy scientists. The biggest difference to Bond films is that in some of the stories these films even proposed alliances between American and Russian agents, in order to defy some crazy international "villain".
The directors were aware that they were just imitating 007, and the special devices used by the secrets agents were exaggerated, with a lot of irony.
The producers of these films knew the importance of music to create an atmosphere and engaged the best Italian composers of those days, Bruno Nicolai, Piero Piccioni, Armando Trovajoli, Piero Umiliani, Alessandro Alessandroni among others. The soundtracks are very typical of the '60s, contributing to form a dramatic and mysterious atmosphere, with unusual instruments from Italian folklore, wordless singing, sexy female voices such as Edda dell'Orso.
Italy, France, Spain and Germany worked together in many co-productions about "special agent adventures", with a small budget but with a great ability of invention which make those "cheapies" very fascinating and very attractive even today
[Published 5 April 2001]
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| Comments: | |
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| janclerques | dec 20 2004 6:51AM |
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| Procuro la pelicula - TOM DOLLAR, com Mauyrice Poli. Janclerques Brasil | |
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| janclerques | okt 9 2004 9:21AM |
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| gentlemans, procuro o filme - TOM DOLLAR, com Maurice Poli | |
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| Martyn | aug 25 2004 11:53AM |
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| Perhaps not as much as a spy movie, but definetly a very swanky italian-made movie with Bond-lookalikes, groovy soundtrack and great suits. Danger: Diabolik! | |
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| charles pagano | apr 8 2004 5:21PM |
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| i've been searching video stores (like movie gallery) that offload out of print vids from the 60's & 70's. i found one called "phenomenal and the bust of tutankhamen" or something like that. incredible score by b. nicolai. you have to recognize the names on the box or the look of the packaging to sniff these out. | |
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| Coré | aug 30 2003 8:22AM |
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| I'm glad to tell you that il Maestro Alessandroni is ALIVE & KICKING (and still playing his tunes...) | |
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| Alessandro | aug 5 2003 10:10AM |
| http://www.dnagroove.it | |
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| There's another great italian spy-movie film from the sixties: Operazione Fuller , base Stoccolma. All the film it's been made in Sweden. | |
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| JC | apr 13 2001 3:57PM |
| http://www.schlockmagazine.com | |
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| Anyone ever see the Italian spy flick "Ring Around the World" from 1966? It's true to the above formula. It's got a soundtrack by Umiliani and features a scene with a cool Italian beat band. Anyone on the list know if the soundtrack was released? JC | |
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| GIOVANNI | apr 9 2001 9:59AM |
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| I'm sorry to say that master Piero Umiliani and master Alessandro Alessandroni died on March 2001. We'll always remember them for their music. | |
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