If ever I was despairing of ever tracking down some item that I'd long sought but always unsuccessfully, Mom would smile and say: "Everything comes to he who waits". And so true did her words prove again on 20 September 2024. Back in 1996, British rock musician Chris Rea conceived, and penned all the music for, a semi-autobiographical movie entitled La Passione (Italian for 'the passion'), which is all about a young boy growing up in northeastern England during the early 1960s but of Italian immigrant descent, and whose family has imbued him with an interest – indeed, a passion – for motor-racing, but most especially for the Ferrari team and their signature blood red racing cars. The movie charts his development from child to adult with his Ferrari infatuation undimmed, and also features several Rea-penned songs, including two wonderful ones sung divinely by Dame Shirley Bassey. In fact, it was originally hearing those songs long ago that incited an interest, a passion, all of my own – to track down the movie in which they appeared and watch it.
But as La Passione has never been released on either DVD or Blu-Ray, is not present on YouTube or other legal online movie sites that I've scoured, does not appear to have ever been screened on British TV, and with the now-rare official UK sell-thru VHS video release of it listed on auction sites for extraordinary amounts – the cheapest example currently on ebay is priced at £49.99 – finding it seemed a remote hope. Until 20 September, that is, when I walked into a local charity shop, and there, among a pile of other second-hand UK sell-thru VHS videos, all priced at just 50p, was a mint example of La Passione, which I instantly purchased. So now I was finally able to view this elusive movie, and acknowlege, as I have done so many times previously, the wisdom of my late mother's words. Six days later, on 26 September 2024, I sat down and duly watched La Passione, plus the 30-minute 'making of the movie' interview with Chris Rea that followed it, so here now is my take on this film:
Directed by John B. Hobbs, but written by Chris Rea who also composed all of its music, including all songs, and released in 1996 by Warner Vision, La Passione is an unusual movie inasmuch as it incorporates several very different film genres, and is therefore best described perhaps as a semi-autobiographical motor-racing fantasy musical, though in reality – a humdrum concept that rarely intrudes upon its story, thankfully – it is more than any of these individual or collective components.
La Passione tells the story of a young boy, Jo Maldini (played by Thomas Orange), growing up in the industrial North-East of England during the early 1960s, whose family's male members, i.e. his father (Paul Shane) and uncles, of Italian descent, are all enthusiastic motor-racing fans, following with great fervour and passion (la passione) Italy's iconic Ferrari Formula One team.
When Jo watches a F1 race for the very first time (the 1961 Monaco Grand Prix), on their humble little b/w TV, he asks his father what colour the Ferrari cars are, which at that time were the famous Ferrari 156 'sharknose' racers, and his father replies: "Blood red!". From that moment on, Jo is totally besotted with Ferrari, their cars, and especially with their world-famous real-life driver, a very charismatic German count named Wolfgang von Trips (1928-1961), who was born in Cologne, and is played in this movie by Benedick Blythe.
Indeed, to the consternation of his family, Jo becomes so infatuated with the German driver – someone whom he has never even met and who is wholly oblivious to Jo's very existence – that he lives vicariously through the life that with the typical romantic innocence of a young child he imagines such an aristocratic, super-stylish, universally-popular figure as von Trips must surely be living in his grand castle and racing in and around Europe, adored by everyone. Consequently, when a horrific crash during the Italian F1 Grand Prix race at Monza in 1961 claims the life of his hero, Jo is totally distraught.
Years later, and now a young man (played by Sean Gallagher), Jo still grieves for von Trips, but his passion for Ferrari and their blood red sharknose racers remains undiminished, even though his own life is as dull as ever. For he is consigned now to a dead-end, joyless job working in his father's ice-cream parlour, which is barely keeping afloat financially, and spending three hours every day cleaning out the ice-cream machine, which is a hard, dirty, thankless but necessary task.
One day, however, Jo hits upon a possible money-making scheme. No matter how much he washes, bathes, and showers after cleaning the ice-cream machine, he is never able to wash off his skin the strong vanilla smell of the ice cream, but to his great surprise he discovers that young women find it irresistible! As the specific vanilla formula that his father uses for his ice cream is one devised by his forefathers, handed down their family from one generation of ice-cream makers to the next, and thence to him, Jo proposes to his father that they use it as the basis for a completely new product – aftershave. However, his very traditionally-minded father is horrified by such a radical suggestion, and denounces it, and Jo, in no uncertain terms!
Totally despondent and disillusioned, Jo steals a sample of the vanilla, leaves for London, and after incorporating it into a range of products including perfume as well as aftershave under his own trade-name, La Passione, he becomes an immensely rich, mega-successful tycoon – so much so that he is at last able to turn his lifelong obsession into a tangible reality, buying every Ferrari car that he could ever want, and also spending time following the trail across Europe that his hero von Trips had once blazed.
He is even visited sometimes by the German racer's ghost, most dramatically at Monza, still driving his Ferrari sharknose, but von Trips's advice to him, combined with his own experiences, propels an increasingly jaded Jo to the stark realisation that it is the joy of a passion that counts, not all the material aspects of it, which tend only to drag it down from its elevated heights to the grim mundanity of reality, which in Jo's case includes the physical duties and responsibilities that owning and maintaining a fleet of Ferraris inevitably entails.
Consequently, Jo sells his La Passione empire to another businessman, and albeit still driving a Ferrari, though no longer a blood red one, returns to his father, who greets him warmly. His son, his prodigal son, is back, and together they will now enjoy together, to quote another Italian phrase, la dolce vita, the sweet life.
La Passione is a movie with a distinctly episodic structure, each episode progressing the plot yet also largely self-contained, and featuring either a segment of lush orchestral instrumental music, or a song. As noted earlier, my favourite songs are the two performed on-screen by Dame Shirley Bassey, making her on-screen movie debut here. (Moreover, it is the last movie of legendary actress Carmen Silvera, who plays Jo's stern but doting Italian grandmother.)
The first of these songs, 'Shirley Do You Own A Ferrari?', which also features Rea singing the role of Jo, is a very heartfelt and melodic but also somewhat wistful, wish-fulfilment number. It appears in a fantasy scene where the adult Jo, still working for his father at the ice cream parlour, meets Dame Shirley outside in the snow one winter morning, and he asks her in song that pertinent question after his father had mentioned how magnificent she had been on TV the previous evening. The remainder of the song is Dame Shirley's reply. Needless to say, the colour of her spectacular gown is blood red (click here to watch this lavish musical scene on YouTube).
The second is this movie's title song, 'La Passione', sung by Dame Shirley as we watch how Jo becomes a tycoon via the realisation, followed by the immense success, of his La Passione perfume and aftershave brand, and the luxurious jet-set life that he now leads, including purchasing every blood red Ferrari that catches his eye (click here to watch this heady, hedonistic musical scene on YouTube). There are also some solo Rea-sung numbers, none of which I'd heard before, but which again I enjoyed, especially 'Girl in a Sports Car' (click here to watch on YouTube this musical fantasy scene that Jo is daydreaming while alone in the ice-cream parlour) and 'When The Grey Skies Turn To Blue' (click here to watch on YouTube this very moving musical scene, the final scene in the entire movie, featuring redemption and reconciliation for both son and father), plus the devotional 'Dov'è Il Signore?' ('Where is the Lord?') sung by chorister Toby Draper (click here to listen to it on YouTube). Indeed, the soundtrack to this movie, written entirely by Rea, proved sufficiently popular when released to reach #43 in the UK album charts. And an up-tempo version of the title song, still featuring Dame Shirley but retitled ''Disco' La Passione', entered the UK singles chart, reaching #41, but placed higher in the Belgian and Dutch singles charts, and proved very popular throughout Europe.
As noted above, La Passione contains a number of fantasy scenes, supplemented by songs and even a couple of brief dance routines, which in my view makes it a musical, but then again it also features some fascinating stock footage of Formula One races from the early 1960s and in particular some rare, scarcely-seen clips of von Trips both on the racing circuit and relaxing with friends and family. In a 30-minute official 'making of the movie' interview that follows the movie itself on my video, Rea reveals that these clips were kindly loaned to him for use in the film by a tiny museum in Cologne dedicated to von Trips. In return, Rea generously made available to the museum on permanent loan, the exact replica used in La Passione of the Ferrari 156 sharknose that von Trips had raced prior to his untimely death in 1961, aged only 33. No original sharknoses still existed by the time that Rea came to make his movie (Ferrari factory policy during the early 1960s meant that they had all been scrapped), but a Lotus engineer friend offered to build a working replica for him, which he did, and this is what duly appeared in the movie and was subsequently loaned to the museum. Another replica was built by a motor-racing enthusiast, and a third one is exhibited at the Museo (formerly Galleria) Ferrari, based in Ferrari's home town of Maranello, near Moderna, Italy.
I've read quite a few professional reviews of La Passione, and have been dismayed by the negative tones and comments in some of them, which largely dismiss it as a bland, superficial vanity project. True, Rea is indeed of Italian descent and grew up in the North East of England, his father was indeed an ice cream seller, and Rea has indeed always been passionate about Ferraris, meaning that this movie was very much a personal labour of love project for him, but what is wrong with that? Such projects often provide a refreshing change from the all-too-often formulaic, repetitive nature of Hollywood studios' big-budget output, and this movie certainly does, so I totally disagree with their less than glowing assessments of it.
Anyone who harbours a heart and not a swinging block of concrete inside their chest cannot be other than moved emotionally by the young Jo's poignant desire to live the glittering life of his hero even though his own modest surroundings and background ostensibly indicate to the viewers that this ain't gonna happen any time soon, only for them to be proved wrong of course when it does – via the magic of a movie like this one! But above all, what Rea has captured so effectively on film is the movie's own title – passion, and plenty of it. And not just passion either – the power of dreams too, and above all else, the limitless, immeasurably potent potential of the imagination.
I had a friend once who stunned me into abject, open-mouthed silence when, while chatting one evening about movies that we had seen, she stated uncompromisingly that she couldn't watch anything that wasn't real. What?? Everyone is born with an imagination, but not everyone chooses to utilize it. Some, like my erstwhile friend, apparently prefer to lock it up and then throw away the key, whereas, in stark contrast, I have always obtained great delight in harnessing my own imagination in order to discover where it will take me and what it will show me. In this respect, I am reminded of another, even earlier friend, who told me that he only ever watched fantasy films, as there was already more than enough dull, unmagical reality in ordinary, everyday life without spending time watching even more of it on screen. This is my view too, though in less extreme form than his, as I do enjoy watching some non-fantasy movies in addition to fantasy ones.
The reason I bring all of this up here is because it seems to me that the film critics who denigrated La Passione and the passion, dreams, and imagination that it conveys and celebrates may themselves be somewhat lacking in those qualities, rather like my first—mentioned friend appeared to be, and may therefore be unsuitable for, possibly even incapable of, offering an unbiased, objective, and informed opinion regarding this movie.
As I am sure that you can tell, I absolutely loved La Passione, and am now even happier than before that I have finally tracked down and watched it. Consequently, if somehow you too ever locate this movie, I definitely recommend that you watch it, and also the interview with Rea afterwards. You do not need to be a motor-racing fan to enjoy it (though I'm sure that this would enhance your pleasure of it even more) – all that you need to have is an imagination, an understanding of what true passion is, and an appreciation of Chris Rea's stirring, emotive music contained in it – a love of the vocal tour de force that is the sensational and most definitely magnificent Dame Shirley Bassey wouldn't go amiss either!
I haven't been able to source an official trailer for La Passione anywhere online, but if you'd like to view for free on YouTube the entire 30-minute post-movie interview with Chris Rea concerning La Passione, which is extremely interesting and informative, please click here.
Finally: to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.
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