Quantum of Solace Filmed in Italy
Movie’s Opening Scenes Shot on Lake Garda and in Siena and Carrara
Oct 29, 2008
Quantum of Solace, the James Bond movie that premiered in London on October 27, 2008, opens with a breathtaking chase scene that defies geography. The chase – which accounts for 15 minutes of action sequences – begins on Lake Garda, moving from Malcesine on the eastern shore, along the Gardesana lakeside road, through tunnels and towns as it circles the northern end of the lake.
Lake Garda Car Chase
Action climbs onto the Tremosine, the steep mountainsides above Garda’s western shore, before dropping again to the lake and the town of Gargnano. Throughout this tortuous tour, Bond’s 007's Aston Martin DBS is chased by villains driving Alpha Romeos. In the movie, James Bond is played by Daniel Craig.
A more dramatic landscape to accompany the action would be hard to find, but before the chase is over, the setting takes a quantum leap of its own, and in a blink of the camera takes up nearly 200 miles south of Lake Garda in the famed marble quarries at Carrara. The Fantiscritti and Canalgrade quarries are part of Italy’s most prized and most extensive marble sources – Michelangelo came to Carrara to personally select the rarest and most perfect blocks for his sculptures.
Siena’s Palio Race
After 007's Aston Martin DBS crashes in the quarry, Bond and the chase makes another leap, this time to Tuscany’s hilltop Medieval town of Siena. While the city’s signature event, the Palio horse race, thunders around Siena’s sloping Piazza del Campo, the chase continues through the narrow stone-paved streets, across the city’s tile rooftops and finally into its underground network of tunnels and chambers – the Medieval cisterns (bottini) where water was stored.
Bond finally emerges from the Fonte Gaia, a wide fountain in the Piazza del Campo, just as the horse race ends. Earlier plans had called for him to emerge from these bottini at the black-and-white Tuscan striped Cathedral, but it was considered sacreligeous, so the fountain was chosen instead.
Sets Built at Pinewood
All but the tunnel scenes were filmed on location (or locations), but the replicas built at Pinewood for the tunnel shots were authentic copies, based on the actual chambers and passageways. Also constructed at Pinewood were the M16 safe-house and the huge art gallery where a fight scene is set, again based on actual buildings in Siena.
The sequence of filming this Italian part of the film was as disjointed in time as it was in geography. The first filming was on August 16 in Siena, the day of the Palio, when the actual race scenes were shot. Then it moved to Lake Garda, where a series of accidents left several cars wrecked before their scenes were even shot, and several people injured. Filming stopped during the police investigation, and there were murmerings of a curse. The cars were replaced so they could be wrecked on cue.
