BRIEF SYNOPSIS MUSIC and other ARTS OF WARby Miles Dayton Fish Screenplay historical/FictionMusicAndOtherArtsOfWar.comMilesFish.comMilesFish@mac.com 479-366-3331
Amadeus meets Casablanca
Logline Summer of 1939, American student Evie Foster traveled from Venice to Siena to participate in an historic Antonio Vivaldi concert and became the center of a plot to smuggle 50 German refugees out of Europe. In a week, World War II will begin.
Theme Man's inhumanity to man under the pre-WWII backdrop of totalitarian governments takeover of Europe. A small Italian community makes a humanitarian response to Mussolini’s regime that offers a ray of hope for the future of mankind. A Post-WWII quote that fits "We can either walk the high road of brotherhood or the low road of man's inhumanity to man." —Martin Luther King, Jr.
*Brief Synopsis* Spring of 1939, an American girl studying music in Venice travels to Siena to participate in the historic Antonio Vivaldi Discovery Festival. She and a group of anti-Fascist resistance-minded music friends in Siena are overwhelmed by the ever-oppressive government and decide to become active in a venture to help 50 German refugees flee Europe.
To help, they reunite a notorious local gang of artists from Tuscany's historic pre-WWI Renaissance forgery industry. They agree to create forged passports and exit papers for the refugees. The forger-artists set up a workshop in a secret underground Etruscan cave under the hospital near the town.
The refugees arrive in Siena during the busy international Vivaldi Festival. Many of them also became involved in the Vivaldi Festival choir. Escape day is set for final concert day, and the forger-artists have arranged for getaway cars to be present at the piazza between the hospital and the Cathedral.
But the Italian police and German soldiers become suspicious and discover the underground cave workshop. With the help of a local Fascist, they board up the cave exit and drop poison gas tablets down the ventilation tube. The forger-artists scramble to get escape without success, and it is apparent all have died. The police and German soldiers leave the crime scene but soon return to discover the local Fascist has tricked them. The forger-artists have left the cave to man their getaway cars in the piazza as the refugees make their way through the tourist-crowded streets to join them.
Military flatbed trucks filled with soldiers storm the piazza and prepare to fire on the refugees and drivers. But shots are heard in the near distance and the armed Italian/German soldiers fall to the ground. Atop the old historical wall at the Cathedral, six shooters masked in bandanas repeatedly fire at the soldiers below until all are lifeless. The getaway cars speed off in different directions.
The shooters descend the old wall. Then, one by one, they pull off their bandanas as they reach the ground to reveal they are the musicians who arranged the escape. They rush into the adjoining Baptistry, where resistance members assist them by covering each of the six in hooded monk robes, and they escape into the tourist-crowded pedestrian street.
Complete screenplay and additional information at MusicAndOtherArtsofWar.com