Lessons Of The Magus: Cinema tourism

Calvia's come up with a new wheeze for tourism. As everyone knows, Calvia isn't only world famous for its beaches and Magalluf's strip, it is also famous for its relationship with the cinema. No, hang on, there's something wrong with this. The first bit's ok. But the second? World famous, no, but the culture department wishes to make a modest association with the world of film something of a tourist attraction. There are going to be cinema routes.

Now, before you start thinking this is something dreamt up by the new lot, the idea goes back to the time of the previous lot, though it doesn't seem to have a great deal to do with either lot as such, as the culture department appears to exist in a vacuum of splendidly non-political isolation. So, no need for the department to run the cinema routes concept up the flagpole with the new lot and create an old-lot, new-lot polemic of flagpole proportions: oddly enough, Calvia would appear not to have a councillor with responsibility for culture as such.

"Calvia es Cine" is a concept that has been knocking around for a few months now and would seem to have been inspired, at least in part, by this year being the fiftieth anniversary of the film "Trampa bajo el sol". No, I confess I hadn't either: or its French title "Train d'Enfer". Calvia can, though, boast some better-known films, one of which had a location not so far from the flagpole of Palmanova. The beach featured in "The Damned United"; well it did, according to one source. But wasn't it Santa Ponsa? "Calvia es Cine" would doubtless know.

If the link with the Cloughie film isn't that strong - filming only took a couple of days - it is much stronger with the cove that was declared the first nudist beach in Calvia. Yes, the route would take tourists to the Playa del Mago, aka Playa Portals Vells II, where some might need to avert their eyes. The cinema's association with this cove is so strong that it was renamed after a film that was partly shot there in 1967 - "The Magus". Starring Michael Caine, Anthony Quinn and Candice Bergen, it was a box-office and critical disaster. Caine said of it that it was one of the worst films he was ever involved with as no one had a clue what it was all about. Still, even rotten tomatoes can carry some cachet and have a beach named after them.

More successful was "Evil Under The Sun", a Peter Ustinov as Poirot, Agatha Christie romp. And Calvia's claim to fame here is? Cala d'en Monjo near to Paguera. But then there are several locations which can claim some fame, none of which are in Calvia - Cala Deya, Cala en Feliu in Formentor, Cala Blanca and Sant Elm in Andratx, the Raixa estate in Bunyola and, above all, the island of Sa Dragonera. And joining "The Damned United" in more recent years, there was "The Inbetweeners Movie", which had some location scenes shot during - if I recall rightly - a fairly miserable March in Magalluf a few years ago. The film wasn't of course set in Mallorca but in Crete.

To these silver-screen triumphs and bombs need to be added the name of Errol Flynn, who never made a film in Mallorca, merely drank it. But then Illetes wasn't and isn't Magalluf. Hence, a plaque to his heroic alcohol consumption would be something of a high point of the touristic cinema route.

In theory, it's not a bad idea. Cinema can bestow great benefits on tourism, but only so long as films are clearly identifiable with locations, which typically means more than a few minutes' footage here or there. When Calvia's head of culture, Catalina Caldentey, refers to the tourism advantages that have come New Zealand's way because of "Lord of the Rings", she isn't wrong, but here we are talking something of a totally different nature and magnitude to Timothy Spall and Michael Sheen arguing for a short while off the Calvia coastline.

Mallorca, and not only Calvia, has a habit of periodically being in thrall to the cinema industry. Its celebrity-obsessed heritage allows it to fall at the feet of Hollywood, even if it doesn't cough up the 150 grand it should have to the producers of "Cloud Atlas". Mallorca can't be held responsible for total turkeys, though "The Magus" should have provided ample warning, but it can be responsible for thinking that there is some advantage to be gained from glimpses of Sa Calobra or wherever amid movie mayhem that many would rather forget. There is no advantage, unless the world can readily identify locations. Otherwise, they are just locations, lost in the swirl of post-production and lost forever because the movie turns out to be a stinker.