Many Beautiful Things

This documentary is about a film actor and his attempt to add meaning to his life by returning to the village of his ancestors that he grew up hearing about in Brooklyn from his grandfather. In the process, he enriches the lives of those around him, as they all freely attest in this cinematic montage of interviews, beautiful landscapes and haunting music. The actor is the highly recognizable Vincent Schiavelli. The village is the historically significant mountain city-state of Polizzi Generosa, named La Generosa in the 12th century by Frederick II, the last Holy Roman Emperor, who adopted the city, granting its inhabitants untold freedoms that redound through history in the creativity of its people. Martin Scorseses parents come from this town, as does the Dolce of Dolce and Gabbana. Schiavelli appeared in "One Flew over the Cuckoos Nest", "Amadeus", "Ghost", and many other films. Clips from "Cuckoos Nest" and "Amadeus" appear in the film. We see actors Jack Nicholson and Schiavellis close friend, Danny Devito. We learn that Schiavelli was a favorite actor of director Milos Forman. We see a still of director Martin Scorsese. It is rumored that Schiavelli was spearheading a movement to revive Polizzi Generosa as a cultural center and that he intended cinema to be his vehicle. This effort was cut short by his untimely death. He is buried in Polizzi. But the film is about his life and about how he affected the lives of others, as they repeatedly tell us, simply by being himself. Schiavelli wrote two books both combinations of stories and recipes. The food of Sicily is central to both of these books and to the film. The first book, Many Beautiful Things, is the title of the film. This is the translation of the old Sicilian salutation "Tanti Beddi Cosi" which wishes on the recipient many beautiful things. This is what Vincent found in Polizzi, driven by the memories planted by his grandfather in Brooklyn, who had been a cook for noble families in Polizzi, and what Vincent embodied by his nature. The second book, "Brucculinu, America" is about the Brooklyn neighborhood where he grew up, on blocks inhabited by immigrants from Polizzi Generosa. He talks about this neighborhood at length in the film. The translator of "Brucculinu, America" is one of the Sicilian interviewees. Her characterizations of Vincent, the book, the living history of Polizzi Generosa, and of things as much a fabric of life in the village as the fog and how it sets in are full of accuracy and poetry. The sounds of the Sicilian language, a separate language that pre-dates Italian, gives us a feeling for the ancient history of Sicily, when it was Greek and Carthaginian, and down through the ages Roman, Arabic, Norman, French, Spanish, and finally, Italian but always separate always occupied, never conquered what has been called that America of antiquity. This comes through; this is what Vincent wanted everyone to feel, and we do.