CORTO MALTESE and INDIANA JONES

I just finished reading "Fairytale in Venice-Sirat al Bunduqiyyah", a comic adventure story by Hugo Pratt of 1977, which is very fascinating and thrilling. It is set in Venice, as may be understood by the title, in 1921, and the main character is Corto Maltese, an adventure sailorman often recurrent in Pratt's works. The plot is centered upon a "MacGuffin", to use a term from Alfred Hitchcock, that is an object to pursue or raid which is the cause of all the happenings in the story: the oppo-sitions between the main characters and their rivals, the events, the adventures. Hitchcock used to claim that as essential and significant this object is inside the plot schemes of action stories, as it is, in itself, void of importance, to the point that

one might even forget what it is about in particular and still follow along the goings-on and adventures caused by its pur-suit, which are, after all, the main interest of the story.

Such an object, in the "Fairytale in Venice", is 'Salomon's key', an ancient emerald that initially belonged to Adam's first wife, and on which are engraved the clues to find the treasure of King Salomon and the Queen of Saba. Corto Maltese sets out on a quest of Salomon's key after an invitation from Baron Corvo, a reckless old friend of his who had already attemp-

ted to get a hold of the emerald before dying.

Right at the beginning of the story, a solemn reunion of mysterious hooded Freemas-ons is immediately interlaced with the high-tension action of a chase with gunshots, in which the main character is revealed when he breaks through a glass roof and tum-bles down right in the middle of the meeting. In the development of the events seve-ral characters are encountered who are mysterious, wearing hoods, or moving about stealthily, spying, eavesdropping or chasing. Secret societies are cited, ancient bad-ges are found of membership to occult sects. Other gun fights take place, as well as riots and dizzy chases on the roofs of the city, in one of which Corto Maltese slips on a tile and precipitates again, this time losing his consciousness. Beautiful and enig-matic ladies are encountered, causing intense love attractions; an old master translat-es the incomprehensible language in which an enigma is formulated. In order to work

out and solve a riddle, secret notes need to be tracked down, which are written in a diary that gets burned in a fire before

being used. There is an ancient historical find as reference, St. Peter's desk from Antiochia, that is the arab funeral stone. Fin-ally, the secret hiding place of the object of such hot pursuits, Salomon's key, which is traced by the main character, turns out to be empty. It is a jest on the part of Corto's acquaintance himself, who had requested him to set out on a search for the emerald. This ending seems to confirm the thesis set forth by Hitchcock, according to which the hunted down object (the "MacGuffin"), which is cause of all the goings-on and the situ-

ations of the story, in the end doesn't have such great impor-tantce in itself, but only in the fact that it sets everything in mo-tion. In "Fairytale in Venice", at the end of the adventures that make up the plot, the "MacGuffin" is not even there!

While I was reading the comic story by Hugo Pratt, several times I happened to think of the third episode of Indiana Jones' saga, which narrates the search for the Holy Graal by the main character. In this case also, the "MacGuffin" is represented by a sacred object, thank God, that causes the countless breath-taking adventures in which the heroes are continuously confronted with relentless opponents on their quest for the relic. A mysterious diary is delivered to Indiana Jones from his father, momentarily out of reach, on which are sketched enigmatic notes about the Holy Graal, its story and its possible current whereabouts. On their adventurous pursuits the main characters visit long hidden places, secret underground graves; they refer to ancient finds from the past, they travel through narrow spaces as well as desert

lands, and all this with recurrent hand-to-hand scuffles, heated gun-fights, and exhausting chases in which they are all the time exposed to great risks and dan-gers. Among other things, it occurred to me that an initial part of Indiana Jones's travels takes place in Venice, for a few days' time, where the whole "Fairytale in Venice" by Hugo Pratt is set. A few years ago I even went on a trip with my bro-ther to visit the places that were the settings for a few scenes of the movie.

At the end of the story, Indiana Jones and his companions manage to track down and reach the Holy Graal, but after a cataclysm caused by its removal, in which many dangerous nazis are destroyed, they decide to leave it where it is, and there-fore give up on its powers of health recovery and eternal youth.

The "Fairytale in Venice" ends with the introduction of the charac-ters by Corto Maltese to the readers, much like at the theater, dur-ing which the main character feels an unexpected weight in his pocket: he reaches his hand to see, and in there he finds Salomon's key. "It is a dream!", he exclaims, and after that he knocks at the mysterious door of a venetian courtyard, and asks to be let out of that story, just finished, and into a new one. This part of the ending reminded me of the last sequences of the movie "Titanic", in which the feminine main character, Rose Dawson, in the New York city rain, at the foot of the Statue of Liberty, suddenly finds inside her coat pocket the "coeur de la mer" diamond.

Not too long ago, I read a novel by Emilio Salgari, a famous Italian writer of about a century ago, in which recurred some nar-

rative themes that I had already come across in other works. There occurred, for instance, that two lovers drank some feigned

mortal poison in order to sleep, while appearing dead, and then wake up and meet again in a situation out of danger, and I

thought of the final episode of Romeo and Juliet, in which, as is known, the two end up losing their lives. And this is not the

only example, in that same story by Salgari, of a theme that reminded me of other similar situations, more or less familiar. But it

has been a few years since then, and I can't remember any more as distinctly, so I just hinted at that. I believe it is extremely

interesting, however, to notice schemes, archetypes, in telling stories, written or filmed, which recur in particular cases, differ-

ent as for space, time, and the characters.

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