Big Screen Scene: 'Secret Passage' With Jeremy Irons and Joe Mantegna
by Marilyn Beck and Stacy Jenel Smith, Chattanooga Times / Chattanooga Free Press
April 9, 2000
THE BIG-SCREEN SCENE: A late-July production start has been set for "Secret Passage," with Jeremy Irons and Joe Mantegna -- and what a production it will be! The feature film, a French-English-Spanish production, will lens in Venice, Italy, Luxembourg and Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The story focuses on a Jewish family forced to convert to Christianity during the Spanish Inquisition of the 16th century -- that secretly continues to practice Judaism. Two sisters flee to Venice, where they pass as gentiles, and establish themselves in high society -- while secretly establishing links to the city's Jewish ghetto, and organizing passage for Jews to the Ottoman Empire.