Salma Hayek and Vincent Cassel are set to star in Matteo Garrone’s new English language movie The Tale of Tales. The filming will begin in the spring and it’s a retelling of the famous collection of Neapolitan fables called “Lo cunto de li cunti”, by Giambattista Basile.
Giambattista Basile’s The Tale of Tales, or Entertainment for Little Ones, was published between 1634 and 1636 and “offers an excellent point of departure for reflection about what constitutes Italian culture, as well as for discussion of the relevance that forms of early modern culture like fairy tales still hold for us today.”
Made up of forty-nine fairy tales it contains the earliest versions of stories like Rapunzel, Hansel and Gretel, The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella or Cenerentola, in Italian. Basile’s Neapolitan version was the first appearance in history of the hardluck girl, her wicked step mother and step sisters, and her magical transformation, but since the original is written in the nonstandard Italian dialect and wasn’t translated until the 1930s, it isn’t as well known.
Matteo Garrone’s last film, “Reality,” won a Grand Prize at Cannes.
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