In the footsteps of the Hornets' Nest boys

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.

Piacenza 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. More pictures below.