General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20267 min read

The Secret of Santa Vittoria

The Secret of Santa Vittoria is a 1969 American comedy-drama directed and produced by Stanley Kramer, based on Robert Crichton's best-selling 1966 novel of the same name. Set in the fictional Italian hill town of Santa Vittoria in the last days of World War II, it follows the townspeople, led by the newly appointed mayor Italo Bombolini (Anthony Quinn), as they hide one million bottles of wine from an occupying German force commanded by Captain Sepp von Prum (Hardy Krüger).¹^•² The film was shot on location in Italy, won the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, and received two Academy Award nominations.³

Key fact	Detail
Director / producer	Stanley Kramer, for The Stanley Kramer Corporation; distributed by United Artists²
Source	Robert Crichton's 1966 novel, a New York Times bestseller for 50 weeks, 18 of them at #1⁴
Release	World premiere and Los Angeles opening 17 October 1969; New York opening 29 October 1969²
Runtime / format	138 minutes; Technicolor, Panavision, English language²
Principal cast	Anthony Quinn (Bombolini), Anna Magnani (Rosa), Virna Lisi (Caterina Malatesta), Hardy Krüger (Capt. von Prum), Sergio Franchi (Tufa)⁵
Awards	Golden Globe, Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy; Academy Award nominations for Film Editing and Music (Original Score)³
Box office	$2.7 million in film rentals by early 1971, after mixed reviews³

Spoilers

Plot

The story opens in 1943, after the fall of Benito Mussolini. Italo Bombolini, a wine merchant widely regarded as the town drunk and a buffoon, celebrates the news by climbing the water tower to paint over an old fascist slogan; the crowd chants his name, the fascist town council surrenders to him, and he is made mayor.⁸^•⁹ He imprisons the local fascists, reads Machiavelli, and forms a grand council.⁹

When word arrives that retreating Germans intend to occupy the town and commandeer its wine, the town's chief source of wealth, Bombolini organizes a "bucket brigade" of townspeople to move one million bottles to an old Roman cave outside town.⁹ The plan, largely devised by Tufa, an injured Italian deserter the town is collectively hiding, is to hide most of the wine and set aside a small fraction for the Nazis to "discover."⁸ A battle of wits follows between Bombolini and Captain von Prum, who suspects the town is concealing more wine and comes under pressure from the SS to find it. In the climactic scene, von Prum puts a handgun to Bombolini's head before the assembled village and threatens to fire unless someone reveals the secret; he is met with silence and, lacking the ruthlessness expected of him, leaves without further incident.⁸^•¹⁰ The Italians win; the Germans leave empty-handed.¹¹

The novel and its real-world basis

Robert Crichton's novel was published by Simon & Schuster on August 29, 1966. It spent 50 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, 18 of them at number one, and became an international bestseller.⁴^•⁶ Kirkus Reviews described it as a well-written novel about a dozen Nazis who occupy a small Italian village that produces Cinzano vermouth, in which the village clown Bombolini, revealed as a reader of Machiavelli, directs the concealment of one million bottles in an underground wine depot.⁶

The story drew on a real episode. According to the Italian newspaper Giornale di Brescia, the true events concerned Santa Vittoria d'Alba, in the province of Cuneo in Piedmont, and the Cinzano plants between September 1943 and April 1945. The German army wanted to requisition machinery and materials for transfer to Germany, and Count Marone, co-owner of Cinzano, had valuable equipment and numerous bottles of sparkling wine moved into one of the plant's large machine galleries with the help of some elderly employees. The gallery was closed off with a wall eight meters high and six meters wide, treated with sand and soot to look old and dirty, and stacked with used barrels and empty demijohns to give the impression of long-abandoned clutter. The Germans never located the hiding place.⁷ Crichton changed the setting from Piedmont to central Italy, and the hidden drink from sparkling wine to red wine.⁷

Production

Kramer acquired the screen rights in August 1966 after what Variety called frenzied bidding, paying $275,000 plus a fee for Crichton's services as technical advisor; Dell Publishing later bought the paperback rights for $500,000.³ The film was set to be the last in Kramer's six-picture deal with United Artists.³ Kramer first offered the role of Bombolini to Spencer Tracy, who declined, saying his Italian accent was "lousy," and recommended Anthony Quinn instead. Quinn decided his character should be large and gained thirty pounds for the role. Kramer then approached Max von Sydow to co-star, but his participation depended on his Broadway production schedule.³

Shooting. Principal photography ran from June 17 to October 15, 1968, ending with four weeks at Cinecitta Studios in Rome; the final production cost was cited as $6 million.³ Most exteriors were filmed in the Italian mountain village of Anticoli Corrado, near Rome, with some scenes also shot in Capranica Prenestina.¹^•⁷ The art department added only a few structures to the town, including a bell steeple, a building façade, an archway, a water tower, and a statue of a turtle on a fountain, and the filmmakers' improvements to the village electrical wiring were welcomed by local authorities.³

Kramer planned to capture only "direct sound," which required the Italian cast members, including Anna Magnani, Virna Lisi, Renato Rascel, Giancarlo Giannini, and Patrizia Valturri, to spend months with dialogue coaches before shooting began; the picture was cited as the first major film to use direct sound in Italy.³ A promotional tie-in with the Italian company Cinzano provided most of the 200,000 bottles of wine seen in the film, and the Los Angeles Times called the arrangement "the longest and costliest ($5 million plus) ad for a trade name ever attempted by a commercial studio."³

The screenplay by William Rose and Ben Maddow omitted at least two major sequences from the novel for time: a three-day wedding feast held in a cave and a "bacchanalian wine festival." The character Babbaluche, killed in the novel, survives in the film.³

Cast

Anthony Quinn plays Italo Bombolini, Anna Magnani his strong-willed wife Rosa, Virna Lisi the educated Caterina Malatesta, Hardy Krüger Captain Sepp von Prum, and Sergio Franchi Tufa; the supporting cast includes Renato Rascel as Babbaluche, Giancarlo Giannini as Fabio, Patrizia Valturri as Angela, Valentina Cortese as Gabriella, and Eduardo Ciannelli as Luigi Lunghetti.⁵^•² Magnani, who had previously appeared with Quinn in Wild Is the Wind (1958), reportedly arrived on set with a team of Italian writers hoping to persuade Kramer to enlarge her role.³ The film was one of Magnani's last screen appearances.⁷

Reception and legacy

Reviews were mixed. The Harvard Crimson's 1969 review found the Quinn-Magnani relationship the most real element in a movie that "approaches fairytale," while judging the rest unexciting.¹¹ The New Yorker predicted the film would "probably be a hit" despite what its critic called Kramer's "confident bad taste."¹² Later assessments have been warmer: Rotten Tomatoes records a 75% Tomatometer from 12 reviews and an 84% audience score, with critics praising Quinn's performance and the location photography.¹

The film won the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy and earned Academy Award nominations for Film Editing and Music (Original Score). Golden Globe nominations went to Quinn for Best Actor, Magnani for Best Actress, Kramer for Best Director, and Ernest Gold for Best Original Score and Best Original Song ("Stay," written with Norman Gimbel).³^•¹⁰ Commercially it underperformed: it grossed $2.7 million in film rentals by early 1971, and commentators have attributed its weak box office to 1969's shift toward counterculture films.³^•¹³ The Film Society of Lincoln Center, screening a 35mm print in 2016, described it as "a spirited ode to resistance" that combines suspense and humor.¹⁴

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026