Plagiarism in To Rome with Love?

Rating: 5/10 (14 September 2012)

Scent of plagiarism? In the creative arts, it's not possible to copyright the idea for a movie, the plot outline for a new opera. You only have copy able rights to such a product when the thing itself has been produced. As they say, if a writer, or for that matter, a director steals from one person it's plagiarism; if he steals from several it's research. Let's now turn to Woody Allen. One of the US' great original minds. That original that you can hardly picture him as a plagiary. Yet, let us talk about "To Rome, with love", Allen's latest accomplishment. What we have here is a hilarious and repeating scene use of an amateur opera singer. An old American visitor of Rome, played by Woody Allen himself , discovers the singing talent of a Roman undertaker. This undertaker, like so many of us, is more than capable as an opera singer when he is taking a shower. This old American visitor of Rome, happens to be an agent, and resolves the amateur's problem by putting a shower on the stage, to allow this talent to sing on a public stage., whilst washing himself on stage.. This scene, an important scene in this film, could also be seen first in a 1999 movie of Chinese director, Zhang Yang. In this film, titled Shower, the scene I s et in a Beijing bathhouse One of the visitors sings "O sole mio". Turn out the hot water, the singer is silenced and shameful again. I would argue that Woody Allen has used this very scene in his latest movie. I double checked the credits of Allen's movie: there was no mentioning of Zhang Yang. There was, however, on the credits of another 3 movies that were directed by Allen, (a.o. Sweet and Lowdown) the name of Zhao Fei. The cameraman Zhao Fei is of about the same age as Zhang Yang and Allen publicly praised his work as a cameraman on "Raise the Red Lantern" by Zhang Yimou. It seems clear that Allen is no stranger to Chinese film. Which brings us to the big question: is the use of scenes of the amateur opera singer an homage to another fellow director, or is there more than meets the eye. If it is not plagiarism, why was Zhang Yang, who got an 2000 Rotterdam Film Trophy for this piece of work, not mentioned? Eric Horssius
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