Volare

"Volare" is a lovely, romantic Italian song that was wildly popular in this country in the 1950s and early '60s. Dean Martin had a hit with it and practically every old-school pop singer, Italian-American or not, sang some version of it. In fact, it was so overused that for a while it became something of a joke. Woody Allen's latest movie, To Rome With Love, which is set in Italy, opens and closes with "Volare." I suspect Allen chose it both because it's a beautiful song and because it once had been a joke. I saw To Rome With Love in a smallish, pretty full theater, and as the song began at the start of the movie, most of the people in the audience spontaneously sang along. I know that sounds unlikely, but they really did. How hilarious, right? (It reminded me of how funny and refreshing it was to hear Dean Martin's version of "That's Amore," long after the song's heyday, at the start of Moonstruck in 1987.) BTW, To Rome With Love, which tells four or five mostly unrelated Rome-set stories, is a lot of fun in a facetious sort of way. The subject of the film is our collective fantasies.