Film locations and the magic of cinema

We walked past the bandstand on our way to the pictures, intrigued by a pair of plimsolls just hanging there.

On arrival at the Orpheus Cinema, we walked in through the lobby, paid five euros each for our tickets and settled down to watch a film.

It was James Bond and For Your Eyes Only.

Unlike Mr Grigg, I’m not a huge Bond fan, even though I share a birthday with Sean Connery. All those scantily-clad women, machismo, male chauvinism and car chases leave me cold. And Roger Moore makes me cringe.

But tonight I was prepared to make an exception. Because this particular motion picture, you see, was filmed on Corfu and was the last showing of the season for a new English language film club. 

The previous week it was Some Like It Hot, one of my all-time favourites. But it clashed with something else so, sadly, Marilyn and Co didn’t get a look-in.

Pity really.

Still, nobody's perfect. For the first time, I actually enjoyed a James Bond film, seeing this beautiful island up there on the silver screen. As is usual, though, when you know a location it's disconcerting to see how the scenes fit together. At one point, there was a shot filmed from the top of the Cavalieri Hotel in town and then the next minute the star and his leading lady were on the balcony of Mon Repos, the birthplace of Prince Philip, several miles away.

It was a bit like watching Broadchurch, the first episode of which I finally saw this week, and wondering why David Tennant and Olivia Coleman came down East Cliff at West Bay and ended up at Freshwater, which is in completely the wrong direction.

Talk about suspending your disbelief.

Sometimes, it doesn’t pay to know a location too well when you are watching drama. Although in the case of Broadchurch, which is set in West Dorset, it’s even weirder because I was the editor of the local paper in the place it's based on. I was even involved in a mysterious murder case that had the whole town talking. It’s as if the writer had looked into my head.

But I digress. I've never been one for gadgets or worked for Her Majesty’s Secret Service (although if I had, I wouldn’t be telling you and, if I did, I'd have to kill you). But it was rather nice to see locations in Corfu and also Meteora, on the mainland, which haven’t changed a bit since For Your Eyes Only was released in 1981.

 

 

 

Greece is still such a magical place.

And it was rather satisfying to see Bond asking for Ouzo instead of his usual Dry Martini shaken but not stirred. I felt rather proud of dear old 007 when he refused a bottle of the recommended wine from Kefalonia, declaring he would much prefer Theotokis Aspro.

We last had a bottle of that fine Corfiot white wine from our own kafenion and mini-market up here in Agios Magikades.

That's about it.

Love Maddie x