A Little Romance | 1979
- DIRECTOR |
- George Roy Hill
This charming teenage romance from George Roy Hill, the director of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting, was filed around three of Europe’s most romantic cities, Paris, France, and Verona and Venice in Italy.
Lauren (Diane Lane), from a wealthy American family, and Daniel (Thelonious Bernard) a working-class boy from the northern Paris suburb of La Garenne, are both academically gifted. They bond after meeting by chance during a film shoot at Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte, Maincy, Seine et Marne, twenty miles southeast of Paris.
The 17th century Château was built for Nicolas Fouquet, the finance minister of King Louis IV. Sadly for Nicolas, its grandeur provoked a fit of envy in the King, who had Fouquet thrown into prison and began planning the even more sumptuous Versailles.
Using the chateau as a filming location is perfectly feasible – it's a screen regular, seen in period dramas such as Milos Forman’s Valmont, Patrice Leconte’s Ridicule, 1998’s The Man In The Iron Mask, with Leonardo DiCaprio, and Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette. Probably most famously, it was cinematically transported to 'California' to become the 'Napa Valley' estate of villain Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale) in the 1979 Bond movie Moonraker.
In Paris, Lauren and Daniel meet up next to Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel – not the more famous landmark but the smaller arch on Place du Carrousel in front of the Louvre. Walking in the Jardin des Tuileries, they bump – literally – into the eccentric Julius Santorin (Laurence Olivier). After befriending them, the spinner of doubtful tales tells the pair about the legend that a sunset kiss on a gondola beneath Venice's Bridge of Sighs ensures a couple will stay together forever.
Afterwards, on the platform of Métro Palais-Royal station, Place du Palais Royal, Lauren impulsively invites Daniel to her birthday party.
It’s during a school trip to the Louvre that Lauren tells her best friend about her feelings for Daniel. But that’s not the real Louvre. Denied permission to shoot in the prestigious museum, a studio set was built, complete with replica plaster statues.
Lauren and Daniel's bid to see Three Days of the Condor comes to naught when they’re unable to convince the cinema manager they're old enough to watch it. This scene was filmed at the old Napoleon Cinema which stood at 4 Avenue de la Grand Armée on the corner of Rue du Tilsitt near the Arc de Triomphe. Opened in 1934, the Napoleon finally closed its doors in 1988 and the premises is now a Lexus dealership.
Things go wrong at Lauren's birthday party and when Lauren's mother (Sally Kellerman) forbids her to see Daniel, the pair plan an escape with dreams of reaching Italy.
Lacking enough money for the trip, Daniel bets what they have on a horserace. Despite his meticulous calculations, his horse comes second. Julius saves the day by using his instincts and secretly putting their money on a different horse – which goes on to be the winner.
The race meeting is at Hippodrome de Longchamp, Route des Tribunes in the Bois de Boulogne, Paris 16, which incidentally is another location featured in Moonraker.
Taking the train to Venice and accompanied by Julius, they mistakenly get off at the wrong train station and, hitching a ride, their first stop is Verona, Italy.
As the legendary home of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, the city is famous for hosting romantic films, including Rome Adventure (1962), Letters to Juliet (2010), the 2013 version of Romeo & Juliet, with Hailee Steinfeld and Douglas Booth, Netflix's romcom Love in the Villa, but it’s also been host to The Great Manhunt (1950), with Douglas Fairbanks Jr, and historical epics like 1961’s Barabbas, with Anthony Quinn, which used the Arena di Verona for its gladiator sequences.
When Julius maintains that Romeo and Juliet were real characters, the two lovers are eager to visit "Juliet's balcony", an attraction which purports to be the setting for the furtive meeting in Shakespeare's play. This film doesn't follow their visit but you can see the (dubious) romantic landmark in Letters to Juliet.
Back to A Little Romance: once he discovers the true nature of their trip, Julius confronts the kids under the arches on Via Sottoriva opposite No. 8, just to the north of Ponte Nuovo.
They get the idea to reach Venice by joining a bike race that starts in Piazza dei Signori, crosses the 14th century Castelvecchio Bridge, before the exhausted Julius has to stop on Piazzale Castel San Pietro in front of Castel San Pietro, where the three debate whether to continue on to Venice or not. You can catch a great view over the city from up here...
The group eventually does reach Venice, but as fugitives. They're exposed inside the legendary St. Mark's Basilica, and chased out into St. Mark's Square.
With the police in pursuit, Lauren stops on a small bridge, tempted to catch a gondola, but Daniel persuades her to keep going. This happens on Ponte dei Fuseri, on Calle dei Fuseri, in the heart of the San Marco District.
They take refuge inside a movie theatre (which just happens to be screening The Sting, another film by director George Roy Hill) at Teatro Malibran, Campiello del Teatro 5873.
The Malibran, originally built as an opera house in 1678, has had its ups and downs which is why in 1979 it was being used as a cinema. It's since undergone a major restoration and reopened in 2001 so nowadays you're more likely to enjoy a grand opera here than a George Roy Hill movie.
It hardly a spoiler to reveal that, yes, of course the two finally kiss in a gondola under the Venice's Bridge of Sighs, the grand covered bridge which connected the Doge's Palace to what was the prison, hence the name.
Many thanks to Brando Benetton for research & writing for this section.
