Monday, January 30, 2012

Salvo Montalbano revisited

Luca Zingaretti, who plays Salvo Montalbano
I haven't quite had a lot of crime reading time lately but while I was laid up with a rather nasty bout of flu for a few days, I discovered the joy of the Detective Montalbano series on DVD.  I got the first three episodes of the series for Christmas, so I pulled them out and watched them.  Oh my god! What an experience! They're all in Italian (of course -- it's a TV series) with subtitles, but I swear, after a while I totally forgot I was reading the words on the screen and was totally immersed. 

The first set of DVDs covers Camilleri's The Snack Thief,  The Voice of the Violin and The Shape of Water, so they don't really follow the same order as the series of books, but who cares.  They're so well done that it just doesn't matter.  Salvo Montalbano transfers well from page to screen, as do the officers who work for him. The locations where these episodes were shot made me want to get on plane to Italy right away, to take a dip in the beautiful ocean and they also made me really hungry for pasta.

Naturally, I couldn't be satisfied with just three episodes, so I bought two more sets of DVDS to watch. Seriously -- this is one of the best film adaptations I've experienced and I highly recommend them.

4 comments:

  1. Nancy - Oh, so good to hear that! I happen to really love the Camilleri series, and I always feel a little wary of adaptations. You never know how they'll turn out after all. Good thing this one turned out well. I'll have to make time for it.

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    1. Definitely do, Margot. They are so well done that you'll forget where you are for a while!

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  2. Thanks for these comments. Subtitles have never bothered me for some reason, so this will be a good series to add to our list.

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    1. Hi Eric!

      Subtitles don't bother me at all. My husband uses them when we watch British TV or movies, which earns him a load of teasing from me ("You can't understand your own language?"). I started watching The Terracottta Dog last night, got to where they found the cave, and evidently fell asleep. Oh well. Maybe I'll give it another go tonight.

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