Italy's in Season (1967) User Reviews

McCallum And Grimes

[boblipton · 6/10 · 29 August 2021]

Here's another of THE FILM MAKERS shorts that MGM offered as promotions for their major releases in the 1960s and 1970s. Here the movie being plugged is THREE BITES OF THE APPLE, which didn't do at all well.

Perhaps it was because of this short. Most of the series emphasized the people headlining the movies being plugged. Here, after a brief scene showing a rehearsal shot, this becomes a travelogue, with a brief plug for MacCallum's co-star on TV's THE MAN FROM UNCLE, Robert Vaughan, and the movie he was shooting in Italy at the same time.

Or maybe the movie was not particularly good.

Promotional short for MGM's "Three Bites in the Apple"...

[Doylenf · 5/10 · 10 October 2008]

A rather routine promotional short with a few glimpses of the good life in Italy's Rome, where, according to the narrator, the good life was invented.

Views of famous Italian landmarks include the Trevi Fountain, by then featured as a part of "Three Coins in the Fountain," which seems to have attracted quite a crowd on the afternoon these scenes were shot.

A picturesque visit to Cortina in the Italian Alps is next, then a river boat town called Portafino where the main dinner always includes seafood. The island of Sardinia features a rocky coastline along the water and the final scenes are filmed in Venice along the canals, where MGM is busy shooting a scene featuring David McCallum. Robert Vaughn is also spotlighted while McCallum acts as a gondolier.

Nothing special, but it does serve as a reminder of all the sightseeing one can do in Rome.

The most interesting aspect of this promotional short . . .

[tadpole-596-918256 · 5/10 · 16 November 2018]

. . . is WHY its title is not included correctly here. As it appeared on the screen in 1967, the heading for this piece SHOULD be "Italy's IN Season." (Of course, I personally prefer to present any film title in all caps, meaning I would normally type ITALY'S IN SEASON.) When I was in high school, our cheerleaders had a chant that went something like, "YES, we will win; Yes, WE will win; Yes, we WILL win; Yes, we will WIN!" (Maybe these "young female athletes"--to use Today's politically correct nomenclature--were all future English majors, but who knows?) At any rate, as this cheer makes clear, verbal emphasis is a key aspect of oral communication. Though the keyboard is a poor instrument to use in an attempt to reproduce ALL crucial elements of a meaningful vocal utterances, there are certain conventions--such as using capitalization to denote spoken points of emphasis--of which any professional language user should be well aware. Harking back to 1967, then, did the producers of this piece mean to convey that the so-called nation of "Italy" was "in season," like whitetail deer are in many parts of the U.S. as of daylight this morning, OR were they trying to elicit some "Jet Set Go-Go" type slang sort of meaning, the exact nuances of which are probably lost down the long corridors of Past Time? Is there anyone left alive who really cares?

This sneak-attack promotional puff piece begins like a horror flick . . .

[pixrox1 · 4/10 · 5 October 2020]

. . . by showing a large flock of killer pigeons on Saint Mark's Square in Venice as ominous music amps up in the background. Suddenly, the winged menaces take flight, and it's clear they won't be content with a mere "Tuppence for Joy." Viewers are led to believe that some sort of avian catastrophe is about to befall Mankind, along the lines of THE BIRDS. Unfortunately, everything quickly rolls downhill from here. About halfway through this disconcerting seven-minute ad, astute viewers will recognize it as a not-so-cleverly-disguised "filler" hawking TWO unrelated upcoming M-G-M features, neither of which stayed in anyone's memory after cast and crew received their final paychecks. Worse yet, both of these forgotten matinee offerings apparently had no connection to Venice OR the horror movie genre. Cheap tricks were nothing new to this "Poverty Row" outfit, which most film historians pigeon-hole somewhere on the same tier with Monogram, Rank and Hammer.