ITALIAN FILMS SIR,—I don't know where Mr. Mayne got the
figures which he quoted in his article on the Italian cinema in your issue of May 14th. They are wildly wrong.
The number of films produced at Cinecitta in 1953 was thirty-six, not one hundred and forty-five. In fact only one hundred and forty-five films were produced in the whole of Italy so that, had they all been produced at Cinecitta, such active studios as Titanus, Ponti-De Laurentiis, S.A.F.A., Incir, would have been completely idle for the whole twelve months, apart from such minor studios as Fert, Icet, and Pisorno, and apart from the considerable number of films shot entirely on location.
While we are at it, 1 Viielloni has nothing at all to do with Naples, and there is not a word of Neapolitan dialect or trace of Neapolitan accent in the film. Its setting is a not very well defined small town somewhere in Tuscany or southern Liguria, the opening scenes having been shot in Viareggio, and the others in various small towns in that part of
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