Reflection Paper #1: "Tea with Mussolini" and The Grand Tour

Danielle Cohen

Prof. Monica Francioso

Cinema and the City

Reflection Paper #1: “Tea with Mussolini” and The Grand Tour

The Grand Tour was a journey originally intended for mainly upper class British men as a rite of passage to adulthood during the late-seventeenth century to the mid-nineteenth century. Soon to be joined by Americans tourists and women, the exploratory expedition ventured to Venice, Rome and Florence in order to educate individuals in various concentrations including economics, anthropology, religion, sociology, geography, art history, etc. However, it is imperative to note that these British and American people only traveled to these places for the Italian past, not present. It was widely believed that the current Italian people were dirty, uneducated and overall uncivilized; British and American folk saw them as symbols of looseness and immorality, especially in regards to their temptation of romance and sex. As a result, the groups that embarked on these grand tours did not assimilate or attempt to connect with the Italian culture, besides appreciating its historical artifacts. Many did not try to learn or speak Italian and most stayed in accommodations that resembled and facilitated their day-to-day’s similar to that of their own countries’. In fact, the British even purposely strived to emulate aristocratic communities from their home, as shown in such famous English hotels as the Pensione Bertolini. This very perception paved the way in which people, especially British and American, look at and thus portray the city of Florence.

Directed by Franco Zeffirelli, “Tea with Mussolini” (1999) follows the tale of a passionate group of both American and British women who attempt to navigate the identities of a semi-abandoned boy and themselves in a place in which they do not necessary belong or fit in: Florence. The narrative, naturally, is predominantly set in Florence and is depicted in very intentional ways, ways of which are rooted in the impressions garnered from the Grand Tour. Throughout the film, the overall theme of Italians—or specifically Florentines—serving as subservient or unruly compared to Americans and especially the English is intrinsically embedded and observed.  

            Firstly, the movie opens up with a series of establishing shots that illustrate famous Florentine landmarks. From grazing over the statues surrounding the Piazza della Signoria to a bird’s eye perspective of The Catterdrale di Santa Maria del Fiore, The Arno and The Palazzo Vecchio, the film asserts Florence as a city defined by its historical sites and, further, merely by its history. Additionally, one of the movie’s first scenes takes place at the English Cemetery, an integral remnant of the Grand Tour. In other words, the fact that one of the bedrock scenes of the film is situated in an American and British-founded monument, and is bookended by the establishing shots of all of the other Florentine landmarks, insists the importance and superiority of the American and British experience in Florence. In that same vein, the scene mentioned above depicts the Scorpioni paying deep homage to the “tomb” of British poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning; in short, they are honoring a revered British woman in Florence rather than a Florentine individual his or herself. These instances in and of themselves set the groundwork for which the film continues to build upon in fostering The Tourist or Grand Tour Gaze in regards to the people of Florence and Italy.

            As the movie continues, we witness the Italian civilians constantly tending to the American and British women’s demands and needs. One subtle example of this is at the beginning of the film when the Italian police run to escort the Scorpioni down the street. Another instance is evident in Elsa and her art dealer’s relationship; although she is eccentric, demanding and difficult, her art dealer still adamantly continues to attempt to please her. Despite he and his team’s apparent frustration with Elsa, she still continues to mercilessly request and he continues to obediently serve. Even when the British and American women were “imprisoned,” this dynamic still very much existed. This can be most represented in the scene where Lady Hester castigates the Italian officers for intruding on the women’s chambers. Even though the Italian soldiers technically have the power, Lady Hester strictly corrects the two men on their manners, going as far as forcing them to repeat English phrases aloud and thus concretizing the dynamic of Italians submitting to American and British—sometimes patronizing—requests.

            As tensions begin to rise and war is on the horizon, the relations between the Scorpioni and the Italian people and government start to fray. The scene that most notably demonstrates this shift is when the same police who had once so eagerly helped the elderly women down the street intrude on the Scorpioni’s tea in the renowned Uffizi Gallery. The police, coined as “anarchists,” trespass on the immensely classy function, proceeding to throw china, art and even pets out of the windows. This blatant destruction of high-society treasures, rituals and the sole reason for the British and American presence in Italy in the first place contends the Italian’s uncivilized nature; by causing such chaotic disorder, the film suggests that they do not understand or respect the essence of high tea and renaissance art and therefore are barbaric in their ways. Moreover, the sheer notion that Luca’s birth was the result of his Italian father’s affair with a mistress could serve enough as the film’s evidence in order to assert the Florentine’s uncouth nature. However, Luca’s father’s wife’s menacing mistreatment of Luca (i.e. verbally harassing him while he was alone outside of his primary school) and Luca’s father’s disregard of Luca’s parenting altogether further inculcate this concept of Florentine irresponsibility.

In the climax of the film, we encounter another negative quality of the Florentine people that the film puts forth: deceitfulness. To begin, Elsa’s speedy love affair with Vittorio and subsequent taken advantage of indicates the dark and poisonous path the romance of Florence can and supposedly will spiral you down; the sexual romance that Florence is notorious for only invites hurt, loss, trouble and iniquity, as supported by Vittorio tricking Elsa into signing away her entire fortune and his pursuit to have her arrested and killed thereafter. Secondly, Lady Hester’s relationship with Mussolini begins entrenched in pre-existing political loyalty and respect, a bond of which is clearly highly respected and abided by in British culture. However, when Mussolini’s government sends a warrant for the Scorpioni’s arrest and puts them in ensuing unrefined accommodations, the film hints that this is not just a mistake as Lady Hester had continued to claim. Upon Lady Hester’s discovery that Elsa rather than Mussolini had been providing the Scorpioni with accommodations in the hotel in San Gimignano, it was clear that Mussolini and the Italian government had deliberately defied a seemingly cherished relationship. This dramatic disregard only continues to paint the Florentines as untrustworthy and even corrupt.

            For the Scorpioni, and most likely the participants of the Grand Tour, Florence is presented as an artistically and scholarly-rich playground on which individuals can simply be surrounded by culture without needing stretch themselves or forgo their own national identity; Americans and the British are able to enjoy pseudo-immersion, perpetuated by the instituted communities of like-minded American and British people, respectively, and the Italians’ almost immediate fulfilling of their needs. In regards to the film itself, Florence most literally serves as the aesthetically-intriguing background on which the story of these American and British heroines and the Italian boy who they “save” (and vice versa) can transpire. As a result, as gleaned and solidified throughout the film, Florence is categorized by two main characteristics: its history and its current existence and inhabitants. Unfortunately, however, these respective brackets, symbolize both Florence’s most and least attractive qualities according to this Tourist or Grand Tour Gaze.

These continuous representations of Grand Tour-spawned opinions of the Florentine locals are important to the representation of the city itself because it emphasizes that the city still today is not appreciated for its current culture. Considering Hollywood is the epicenter of film, American or Western ideals have great power in how places such as cities are depicted and thus valued. Given that British and American people possessed these perceptions of Florence then, they have been adopted into the way Americans and the British continue to look at and illustrate Florence now. Further, as result of the gravity of Hollywood and Western opinions’ power in the movie industry, these seemingly antiquated beliefs actually influence how the entire world looks at Florence now as well. This correlation highlights the colossal amount of control these centers of globalization, such as Hollywood with film, attain in creating and perpetuating ideas about certain things and, consequently, how those things—or places—evolve in their own behavior as a result. Therefore, because of such films like “Tea with Mussolini” and the attitudes passed down from the Grand Tour, Florence apparently is continued to be deemed a city lauded for its past. Although it may not be as flagrant as how it was displayed in “Tea with Mussolini” or how it actually was during the Grand Tour, this sentiment exists in modernized fashions that adequately accommodate the zeitgeist of our world today.