Ravello Observations

Classic Italian town: Piazza Duomo, with the dome on the main square surrounded by cafés, meeting points for locals (only 3000 outside the season) and in July tourists like us, who enjoy the overwhelmingly bella vista to the Amalfi Coast. In a few days you slow down and find your routine of walking to the square in the still bearable morning temperature, have your cappucino and brioche to sit down and greet by-passers, who fall in love with the blond, blue-eyed nine month old baby, who is here with his parents, one of them the niece of my wife, who has invited the four of us to celebrate her birthday. Back to the holiday appartments and the swimming pool, equipped with the pink La Gazetta Sportiva, just one of the daily newspapers totally dedicated to sport, mostly gossip about the transfers of Italian soccers teams, the big issue these days being the possible move of Zlatan Ibrahimovic from Milan to PSG Germain in Paris. The 40 page newspaper is about sport all over including 4-6 pages about the world around us like the constant massacres in Syria!

Siesta… and then the fabulous cooler evenings of finding a good outside restaurant to have a dinner, an espresso and a grappa.

Back to the square that in 1953 housed John Huston and his film team – according to a plaquette on the wall of a house in Viale Wagner (yes, the composer was here) – during their planning and shooting of ”Beat the Devil” casting Humphrey Bogart, Jennifer Jones, Gina Lollobrigida and Peter Lorre in a film that had Truman Capote as co-scriptwriter, a film that Wikipeaks notes was made out of a script fabricated from day to day with a doutable end result – you can watch the film in its entire duration online. It has been declared ”public domaine”.

Danish poster to the film, title: Fuld af løgn.