Ellen Page and Jesse Eisenberg in “To Rome With Love.”
By Paul Goldfinger, editor @Blogfinger
Woody Allen’s latest film, “To Rome With Love,” opened to widespread distribution on July 6 and is currently playing locally. As a Woody Allen fan, I enjoyed this film. As usual, there were the wonderful scenes of a gorgeous city—in this case, Rome. You can’t help but see the similarity to his last (2011) movie–the hugely successful “Midnight in Paris.” In addition, the musical score has a variety of jazz, romance and nostalgia.
One of the soundtrack songs (below) has that old fashioned quality which you can hear in his earlier work, such as “Radio Days” and “Sweet and Lowdown.” This song, called “Non dimenticar le mie parole” (Tr—Don’t forget my words), is performed by Emilio Livi and the Trio Lescano (R) in 1937.
“To Rome with Love” covers many Woody themes such as relationships, adultery, psychiatry, music (opera), fleeting fame, romance and sex. The film is unusual in that there are four intertwined distinct short stories that are unrelated, other than by the Rome setting, and each one is fun, although they don’t always work.
I especially liked Penelope Cruz as a wise hooker in a tight red miniskirt, Roberto Benigni, who won an Oscar for “A Beautiful Life,” who inhabits the role of an ordinary guy who suddenly becomes famous, Ellen Page (from “Juno”), who plays a beautiful and hot actress who is a pretentious phony, and Woody Allen himself, who acts in his first film since 2006. Woody plays his familiar neurotic comedic character, who is looking to revive his career by discovering a new opera star who only sounds good in the shower.
If you like Woody Allen, you will want to see this film and appreciate it for its usual miracles: music, cinematography, setting, skilled casting, original writing, wonderful characters, funny lines and goofy situations.
From “To Rome With Love” here is Emilio Livi and the Trio Lescano, who sound a bit like the Chipmunks:
Ciao! No offense meant! Visit our site http://www.trio-lescano.it/youtube_1.html for a full summary of the songs posted on Youtube and many more things on life and career of Lescanos.
Paolo. My wife played a YouTube recording for me by the Trio Lescano. It is indeed a unique and marvelous sound, but I recognized that when I posted the movie song in 2012. Once again, I meant no disrespect and I apologize if anyone thought so.
I have been to Italy and I love it all—the people, the food, the history, the wine, the culture, Giada Di Laurentiis’ sweaters, and of course the music.
Ciao, Paolo from New Jersey.
Vito: Sorry for the spelling error. If you look at the album cover which I posted, the last letter looks like an “a.” Anyhow, I did correct it.
What is missing from this discussion is the fact that I chose this song from the movie soundtrack because I enjoyed the performance very much, including the sound of the Trio.
My comment at the end about their sounding like the Chipmunks was not to be critical, it was merely an observation. Alvin and the Chipmunks were a successful singing “group” for many years in the US. They made albums, had a #1 hit single, were in some movies, and they had a unique sound which won two Grammys.
I am a fan of music from that era of the ’20’s through the ’40’s, and I have always been partial to the music and even the musical sound of the Italian language. —-Paul
Hello Paul, correct name is “Lescano”, not “Lescana”, please correct. As Paolo wrote yesterday, Trio Lescano was the most famous vocal Italian group of the thirties.
Regards
Well, as you probably know now I am part of the staff of a site dedicated to Trio Lescano,and some of our readers checked this blog. We love so much the Lescanos, so your comment was discussed in the site.
Of course you’re free to express your ideas freely; that’s the core of every blog.
Listen to some of the Lescano songs on YT; we posted more than 200 of them.
Peace!
Paolo
Reblogged this on Blogfinger and commented:
Yesterday we received a comment from Italy complaining about this review (see comments). Paolo thought we disrespected the Trio Lescano by comparing them to the Chipmunks.
Today we had 10 hits from Italy. I thought that was curious, so here is the Blogfinger review of “To Rome With Love.”—–Paul @Blogfinger
Trio Lescano can in your opinion sound like the Chipmunks. But they were the most famous Italian group of the thirties,with more than 350 sides published.
They were inspired by the Boswell sisters,and they inspired the Andrew Sisters (which started their career AFTER them and sound the same way).