In the footsteps of the Hornets' Nest boys, part 2: Localita La Nera

In the Footsteps of the Hornets' Nest Boys, part 2: La Nera, Monticello

by Lakambini (Bing) Sitoy

The morning of August 24, our taxi arrived a few minutes before 10. Our driver was a man in his 30s called Roberto who spoke to us in Italian, with a few gestures, to confirm that we were to drive over to a place in the commune of Monticello (Gazzola) southwest of Piacenza, stay for a few minutes, and then come back. Roberto apologized for what he said was his bad English, though it was perfectly fine for communication purposes.

In the opening sequence of the movie Hornets' Nest, the early morning peace of a little village amid the Apennines is rudely shattered by a convoy of German trucks, disgorging soldiers who herd the villagers into a row to one side of a dusty lane. Opposite them, beside a pond, the soldiers position themselves, evenly spaced, their weapons at ready. The viewer glimpses a squat stone church, vegetable gardens, weathered stone facades, a house with a second story porch and an image of the Virgin Mary, a pleasant three-story house with manicured shrubbery, an elderly man in a cassock and biretta, middle-aged men in white undershirts, terrified elderly women in black, two young mothers nursing their babies.
High up on a slope, a row of boys peers through stalks of grain at the scene below. They look to be between the ages of 10 and 16. Behind them are distant white cliffs, a suggestion of limitless mountains.

In the village, the German commander demands to know where the partisans are hiding. The partisans are, in fact, not too far away, watching the scene through a screen of trees. The villagers refuse to reveal their position. When they realize what will happen next, they begin to wail. At a shouted command, the soldiers open fire…

Our destination on this morning was where these scenes were filmed -- Localita La Nera in Monticello, Gazzola, the province of Piacenza. (For those who haven't followed my previous posts: I saw Hornets' Nest when I was 11; my sister and I started writing stories about the characters, integrating them into a massive imaginary world we built from movies and books; for my juvenile writing the film was a watershed.)

In just a couple of minutes we had left the old center of Piacenza and were driving past the old city wall, through a series of roundabouts, and then onto the highway. There were none of the tall cypresses and olive trees that were common down south. The trees had a broadleaf/deciduous look. The light was the same sort of light in the movie, which was filmed from July to September, 1969.

There was a line of blue hills in the distance. About 20 minutes out of Piacenza, the change in the terrain began – gentle rolling valleys, now to our left, now to our right, plowed land, farm buildings. Then the grade increased and the road began to wind around the hills, trees flanking the road on either side. It was at this point that I began to feel an incredible heart-pounding excitement – not the apprehension you feel as your plane taxies down the runway for take-off, but a teenage sort of anticipation, as a girl might feel walking into a classroom where she knows her crush is present.

I could see on the GPS that we were soon to take the road down into La Nera, and I told Roberto (who I’d given a bit of background as to Monticello as the filming location) to drive on just a bit. Just a bit, just a bit, until we were several hundred feet down the road, by a spot where the white rock of the Apennines showed through the scrub grass – worn down from decades of people parking here or using it as a turn-around spot. This was the place that I’d decided, by consulting Google Street View and Google Earth satellite view and examining the mountain behind the boys, that the filming crew had been located as they filmed the scene where Aldo and his gang crouch in the grain field, looking towards the distant village. Roberto turned the car around, and I raised my head and allowed myself … to look.

I couldn’t breathe at first. It was there, all there … the little village a few hundred meters down the grassy slope, the jade green of the duck pond, the blue mountains in the distance, the expanse of field and sky. It had an aura of unreality as it shimmered in the summer light. And it was all around me, bigger than the movie screens of my childhood. As I got out of the car, my knees went weak and I stumbled a few steps in the direction of the slope. Cicadas were chirping in the grass. It seemed as though I stood before an invisible wall that went as high as the heavens – the Fourth Wall, actually, which my imagination would penetrate time and again when I was a child. The whole scene seemed to vibrate. What I must have been experiencing was the physical effect of the /blʌd/ rushing in my veins as my heart pounded with excitement and joy.

The area around La Nera has changed somewhat from when the production crew turned it into the village of Reanoto. There are more trees down the slope and along the private road to the hamlet, and a house sits halfway down, before the bend in the road. There are lots of electric wires overhead. Three rows of electrical posts lead down to the hamlet.

In the film, huge pylons can be glimpsed in the background of some scenes -- rows of them helping to power the Trebbia valley, I suppose. I didn’t really notice them when I saw the film as a kid. Nor could I have possibly noticed the telephone or electric poles at two different spots during the opening sequence, blending in nicely among the trees. I wonder whether, in 1944 when the opening sequence was set, Reanoto was supposed to have electricity.

Roberto suggested that we go down and see if there was anyone in the hamlet. He thought it was okay to give it a try --- the worst would be that we would be sent away, told off for trespassing. We could just tell them we wanted to look at some fine old buildings, he said.

As we moved down the road, gravel crunching beneath the wheels, the hybrid engine almost soundless, I noticed the brick structure in the field, which I had used to determine the location of the boys relative to Reanoto. I’d puzzled over it – a small shed? But now I think it was a shrine. Some of those, according to Google, are found in fields and slopes around Italy.

The first four houses seen in Hornet's Nest are now all gone. They were built -- weathered stone and all -- for the film. Instead, there was just grass and some trees. We drew abreast of the pond and stopped at the house before it. There were two men sitting on a bench. In the movie this is the big house shaded by trees that the priest is forced out of, along with several women. There is a little shrine on a plinth next to it – it was there in 1969 and it is there to this day.

One of the men came forward. This was Gianmaria Conti, middle-aged, a little younger than me. Roberto explained our errand, and I got out of the car and told them the name of the film in Italian. At the words “I Lupi Attacano in Branco,” the older man -- his father -- became quite excited, as though a switch had been flicked on.

Suddenly, the three Italians were talking animatedly, Roberto translating from time to time. Then the older Mr. Conti started talking directly to me, drawing me away to, for example, show me something about the walls of a stone storage building/loft. I couldn’t make out a single word that he was saying, unfortunately, but I knew that in the film this building had been bricked up, and explosives mounted at strategic points on the walls.

We learned that about a year before the filming began, construction started on four new houses along the road, to the north of the Conti residence. The duck pond became the center of the village. It’s incredible that these houses were just facades, because they match, in architecture, the actual buildings of La Nera, though weathered and decrepit. By contrast, the Conti house looks much better kept – the part of the village where the fine people lived. In the film, quick edits conceal the fact that the house is on the same row as the constructed set and the church, and that indeed the Reanoto sequences were all filmed on a stretch of lane only 150 meters long.

One of the nursing babies was three months old and came from a place called Nibian, the elder Mr. Conti said, indicating the mountain areas to the west. I heard it as Nevia or Nevio, but discovered through Google that it was Nibbiano, a commune which a few years ago was merged with three others to form Alta Val Tidone. Nibian is the name in the Piacentine dialect. I hadn’t realized at the time that the older man was likely speaking this dialect, which differs from Italian, having some features of French. (More about the baby, and the special effects behind the opening sequence, in the comments to the photos).

They took us inside the building with the cross on top. This, they explained, had once been a barn or stables, before becoming a church. It was no longer such. But in 1969, the elderly man in cassock and biretta had been the actual parish priest. There were tools on the wall on the left side, and several long tables covered in coated plastic cloth with benches and condiment trays. This, Gianmaria explained, was where residents of the surrounding area would meet – a community center. On the wall, among various family photos from years back, was an autographed photo of Rock Hudson in the role of Captain Turner. Gianmaria brought it out into the light of the door and showed me the now faded autograph in the lower-right hand corner. The Conti family had hosted Rock Hudson for dinner during the filming, and most likely other members of the production. I asked if Gianmaria and his father could pose with the photo.

The elder Mr. Conti had been part of the movie, too, wearing (he gestured) the uniform of a "Tedesco," a German soldier. I think he was one of those in the firing squad line, because he pointed to the ground where he stood, which was where the row of soldiers had been. In the space between an annex to the Conti home and a building that currently serves as a hayloft/storage space, was where two costume-and-makeup trailers had been parked. I wonder who else in the family, and among the other residents of La Nera, had been in the film, or rather, which ones they were. There are six buildings in the locality, and even today, some 50 people reside there.

When I told them Hornets’ Nest had been my favorite movie as a child, the old man expressed disbelief. That morning, I looked younger than my actual age, and more feminine than I really am inside. But I could not explain to him the experience of seeing this film at age 11 (with my parents, of course) on the big screen, the shock and intriguing discomfort of seeing boys only a little older than myself in such violent situations, the archetypal fantasy of orphanhood (only appealing because it is a fantasy), my attraction-repulsion to those 15 grimy faces that were young but not cute in the commercial Hollywood way. My desire to break the film down into its constituent pieces, trace all its players, understand its special effects, is perhaps rooted in the deep unease that the film’s resolution – Carlo, Silvio – and the violence of its opening sequence created in me, and which I actually still feel even though, on my computer, I have gone over these scenes frame by frame, hundreds of times.
(More to follow)

In the footsteps of the Hornets' Nest boys, part 1: Piacenza

 In the last week of August, we flew to Italy, landing at Milan Malpensa and then taking the train from Milano to Piacenza.  It was here that the cast and crew were based during the three to four months (June to September) that Hornets' Nest was filmed.

There was a very nice young man (Italian, from Piacenza) on the train who helped my husband carry his suitcase down and to the stairs. At the same time there was a nice young man (black African) who helped me carry mine! As soon as we were out of the station, the thing that struck me was the heat. Bright and dry. Heat that seared the skin. It was 33-34 degrees C.

We decided to drag our suitcases from the station to our hotel – it was just 1.1 kilometers according to the map and would take only 16 minutes. We skirted the park that is just beyond the station (sticking to the concrete sidewalk to avoid the gravel paths). We passed a group of people who were speaking one of the Philippine languages – Tagalog or Cebuano, I don’t remember. There was a young woman in very high heels, a very pregnant woman in bicycle shorts, another woman carrying a baby of about one year old, a youngish man about the same height as the women. They looked like they could have come from any town park in that country (my country – I have dual citizenship), in their sun-faded clothing and tank tops.

As we continued dragging the suitcases we were overtaken by a young family, the woman holding a child (perhaps a trio from the group we had earlier seen in the plaza?). Filipino as well. Over the next 24 hours I would note the presence of a good many black Africans, south Asians and a few other Filipinos as well. Residents, not tourists, just going about their business.

We found the Grande Albergo Roma after half an hour. It was on a corner just a narrow street away from the main square, the Piazza del Cavalli. It had a very unprepossessing entrance – glass doors a few steps up, the name on a vertical sign down the side. It could have been the entrance to a little bank. There were modern paintings in primary colors set up in the lobby, and the following morning we took a leisurely breakfast at the seventh floor restaurant, with a well-appointed buffet, everything clean and subdued and very deserving of its four-star ratings.

The man and the woman at the front desk were nice, but neither of them had heard of Hornet’s Nest. They had already arranged for a taxi to pick us up at 10 am on Saturday to take us to Monticello, stay for about an hour, and take us right back. The man was from Piacenza and was a small kid in 1969.  He had never heard of it from anyone. They had to ask when the filming took place, and when I told them that the cast and crew had stayed in this very hotel from July to September 1969, they were surprised but not excited. The film is clearly not part of the legacy or legend of the place (I had been hoping for some evidence, photos of Rock Hudson in the restaurant… but the hotel is too internationally four-stars, too much like a modern airport, for that). When they Googled the name of the film after I had supplied it in Italian (I Lupi attaccano in branco, rather than Il Vespaio, which is no longer used), the cast name that they recognized seemed to be Jacomo Rossi Stewart, who has a small part in the film.

A friend of ours from Sweden has described Piacenza as a boring town. It does seem like the ordinary industrial town that Dan Keller remembered it as, but there were little pockets of beauty, perhaps the way the sun shone on the red-tiled roofs, or lit up a wall, leaving the sides in blue shadow. There was a view of the back of buildings from our window – just a regular view, but there was some joy in knowing they were the back of the buildings facing the Piazza del Cavalli. I investigated the horse sculptures flanking the piazza that evening, and the following day. It was exciting to see Italian horses on our trip – in actuality and in art. Living in Denmark I have sort of grown accustomed to the presence of horses, but in Italy they are somewhat different -- powerful, contorted, and quite sexy. In Denmark they are utilitarian, heavy and straight – draft horses rather than steeds and mounts. The Danish riders I see don’t gallop, they plod sedately along bridle paths or roadsides. By Monticello there are stables too, less than a kilometer from La Nera. (I didn’t get to look them up, though – there were other things to do). Behind the front desk of the hotel there was a giant rearing image of one of the horses in the Piazza del Cavalli. We tried the horse burgers at a little café the following day, so I got my equine fix, all right.

We stayed in a regular room on the fifth floor, where there were two suites, named after Italian composers. On the floor above was the biggest suite in the hotel. Looking at the pictures I sent via email, Dan confirmed that the Albergo Roma has been renovated since most of the cast and crew of Hornet’s Nest stayed here 1969 – it was smaller and cozier, less (he agreed) like a modern airport. Back in the day it was still called the Albergo Roma.  I learned from him that the film’s two stars, Rock Hudson and Silva Koscina, lived in fancy rented houses the duration of the shoot.  

My husband and I didn’t wander so far from the hotel, having a light dinner of pasta at a café, sitting outdoors, off the Piazza del Cavalli. The piazza was virtually deserted, even if it was a Friday night. Maybe it was too early, though we sat there from around 7:30 to nearly 9 pm. Opposite us was an arcade that seemed ancient, where a younger clientele had gathered, eating Italian chips (I don’t know what they are called but they are served in a basket) and nursing drinks, though it was, by Danish standards, the dinner hour. There were no vespas. I had read somewhere that they were banned in the old centers of Italy fairly recently … I’m not sure if that is correct, though. So although vespas figure heavily in keychains and magnets, they were very nearly absent to the ordinary tourist’s eye. In their place were the equally hazardous delivery riders on all-too swift, heavy-tired bicycles, with their cumbersome boxes. I exaggerate (as happens when you blithely cross a cobble-stoned path and are nearly mown down by one – this happened to me a few days later in Verona). But there were a lot more bicycles than Vespas overall, and I noticed little children mounted on handlebars as their fathers pumped away.

And somehow what we saw seemed to be the cleaner, older, more rarefied model for life in small-town Philippines. Not so weird when you consider how Philippine towns were originally laid out along the lines of Spanish towns, back in the 19^th century or so, and the configuration has not changed all these years, and resembles the layout of Italian "towns" to some extent, with a Catholic church, a municipal building and a school around a central square (piazza or plaza); there may be other, smaller squares or a landscaped green park as well. The difference is, among others, in the building materials and the facades.

I took photos of the square by night, too. I reasoned that the young boys in the cast must have done a lot of exploring on their own, after filming was done for the day. I was thinking of how it must have been all those years ago -- did they ride vespas too? Some of the older boys would have been the right age. Some might have had girlfriends by then, left behind in Rome or Naples. I didn’t see any young people at all around the square – only tourists or Italians about 25-years old and up. Where do the teenagers, the courting couples, hang out today? Or am I so ancient and unsophisticated I still believe “courting couples” are a thing? They must all be on their phones.

There would have been a lot of smoking going on back in 1969 – that is evident in the film. Drinking too? Was there a chaperone, sort of like a camp counsellor, to make sure everyone behaved? (Today, we would say “for the safety of the children.”) Their parents might have come up, pair by pair, to see how they were doing, just as Dan’s parents did, paid for by the production. Translators? How did the boys communicate with each other? I get the notion that towards the end of filming, the boys from Naples began to hang around each other, while the boys from Rome or with an English-speaking background, formed another group. I don’t think the directors told them (in group shots) where to stand, and I see these two groupings in both the behind-the-scenes pictures and in the film itself.  It’s very natural behavior.  (Which Dan confirmed too – that they “self-segregated” according to language and other commonalities).

 The following day we took the taxi we had booked, heading southwest to La Nera in Monticello – and what a breath-taking experience that was. More to follow. (And more images below).