This cultural post focuses on Malta's role as a top film-making destination for many Hollywood movies. The historic style of the architecture and beautiful, aquamarine waters serve as an ideal backdrop to a number of famous scenes. The website Visit Malta posted a mini-podcast series highlighting landmarks and geographic features filmmakers capitalize on when traveling to the country. In this post, I will recap some of the most interesting facts I learned!
Beginning with the Island of Camino, there are three primary features that have been captured in a number of movies: The Blue Lagoon, St. Mary's Tower, and the Santa Maria cave system. During my time in Malta, I recall going on a boat tour in which I actually got to see many of these features. The Blue Lagoon, my personal favorite spot in Malta, was most notably featured in Troy (starring Brad Pitt) and Swept Away (featuring Madonna). The crystal waters and delicate, sandy beach was used to create a sense of luxury and seclusion in Swept Away and the rocky entrance to the island was used as a backdrop in Troy. Additionally, St. Mary's Tower and elaborate cave system play an important role in the 2002 film Count of Monte Cristo.
Next, the origin of Popeye Village is an extremely interesting story. In 1980, Popeye Village was constructed entirely from scratch for the film Popeye the Sailor Man featuring Robin Williams. A construction crew spent 7 months building the fictional village that included a church, tavern, post office, school, and more. The village is located in Anchor Bay, Malta, which was also perfect for shooting nautical scenes. After the filming ended, the village was preserved and redeveloped as a theme park for kids and families. Activities have been added to the village and a boat departs every hour for tourists to visit. For both domestic people and tourists, the village is an extremely popular place to go.
The third movie destination worth mentioning is Fort Ricasoli, which has been preserved incredibly well since its historic origins. Originally, the fort was built by the Knights of Malta, in order to protect the harbor against foreign naval attacks. The fort is not open to the public but is repeatedly used to build historical Greco-Roman styled movie sets. The location is ideal because it is secluded, very large, and historically-intact. In addition to utilizing The Blue Lagoon of Camino, the production of Troy primarily took place in Fort Ricasoli. The entire space served as a foundation for the 10-acre city that was built for the production. Maltese locals worked with the producers and director throughout the process to accommodate the needs of the movie. In the final scene of the movie, Troy is burnt down in a series of explosions, so Fort Ricasoli was a perfectly-contained space to carry out these effects. Similarly, the producers of Gladiator used the Fort for filming. Most notably, the Fort space was used to construct the Roman Coliseum featured in the final scene. The coliseum constructed was approximately 1/3 the size of the real one and digital animation was used to enhance the structure during editing. Two other famous movies that were shot at Fort Ricasoli include Agora, a historical drama depicting the Roman Empire's Alexandria, and Cut Throat Island which utilized the baroque-style entryway to the fort.
The podcast series details the history of 9 major film locations in Malta, although this post only highlights 3 of my favorite from the series. For anyone considering visiting Malta, I highly recommend listening to this mini-series on the Visit Malta website so that you can appreciate the attractions when you get there! Without researching the role of the film-making industry in Malta ahead of time, there is a lot that one might miss out on. Below are a couple of pictures I took of famous film locations when I traveled to Camino Island.
Podcast Link: https://www.visitmalta.com/en/podcast-movie-locations
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