Subject
The excerpts are taken from the 1964 film “Che fine ha fatto Totò baby?”, (Whatever Happened to Baby Totò?) a parody of the thriller “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?”, of 1962, starring Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. Credited to Ottavio Alessi, the film was in fact largely directed by Paolo Heusch. The story features Totò and his brother Pietro (played by Pietro De Vico, sublime comic sidekick) who steal a suitcase at Rome’s Termini station but in it, discover a corpse. Setting out by car to rid themselves of the suitcase, they pick up two girls hitchhiking with a suitcase similar to theirs, and then accompany the pair to their villa of lodging. This is the Casale di Santa Maria Nova, at the fifth mile of Via Appia Antica, today at number 251 of the same road.
The villa, the property of the state since 2006, was earlier owned by the American film producers Elena and Evan Ewan Kimble, and used more than once for film scenes. The excerpts filmed outside the farmhouse reveal the scene of the Roman countryside in the 1960s, before the changes leading up to the current day. We see a view of the building structure, rich in construction phases: from a masonry cistern dating to the 2nd century AD, transformed as a medieval tower, then by the Olivetan Monks as an agricultural manor house, from which a small semi-circular votive chapel is visible, then the 20th century transformations as a civil residence. The scene of the marijuana smokers takes place inside the villa, in the large space now used by the Appia Antica Archaeological Park for temporary exhibitions. By the end of the story, Totò too has taken drugs that drive him insane, and after gruesome and sadistic murders, send him to the asylum.
Director
Ottavio Alessi
Year
1962
