A Brief Vacation

Rating:
Summary: Finally available!! Hurrah!!!!!!!!!
Review: I have been wanting to share this movie with friends for more than 30 years. It has always been on my top 10 list of best movies ever seen. What I remember most are the subtle scenes which communicate so much, the woman wrapping her meat patty from her factory provided lunch in a napkin and slipping it into her purse in order to be able to give it to her son later on. Or after finally going to see a doctor, making a quick detour first into a department store to buy new underwear, too embarrassed that the doctor would see her in what she had on. Or at the very end, when the train passes by the billboard with the Mao graffiti on it (the most subtle of political comment). This is a splendid and brilliant movie, exposing the complexity of social circumstance without ever taking the easy way out, or suggesting there is ever an easy answer, in this case just a brief vacation.

Rating:
Summary: Life goes on
Review: This has always been one of my favorite movies, and I was overjoyed to see that it was finally available on DVD. Unfortunately over the past 30 years we have grown, and what was once cutting edge, now appears to be something that has been seen many times before. Florinda is still beautiful and the clothing styles would fit right in today. The return to 1973 that I was hoping for didn't happen. A tad dissappointed, but still a great movie, and I am glad to have it in my collection.

Rating:
Summary: I've been waiting a long time for this!!!
Review: We saw A BRIEF VACATION when it first came out and loved it so much we watched it a second time. It is an extraordinarily
beautiful and poignant movie. The directing and acting are both superb. Memories of it have haunted us for years! Emphasis on memories: it has NEVER been available
until this DVD. With this release, the film should gain a
whole new generation of fans. We are eager to share it with
our children and friends.

Rating:
Summary: Wow! Finally!!! What a Tender, beautiful Film!
Review: What a gem of a film is DeSica's BREVE VANCANZE. Just last week I finally nailed down Manuel DeSica's poignant main theme on a DRG compilation.

It's a melancholy film, for sure, and Florinda's performance is stellar. The moments of tenderness are memorable, and the humanity seems almost rare in this age of dumbed down, coarse filmmaking. I buy very few DVDs, but A BRIEF VACATION goes into my collection alongside LA DOLCE VITA, THE GODFATHER, The Original SOLARIS and other indispensables.

The casting here is stellar. DeSica could not have picked a more sympathetic presence than the lovely Florinda Bolkan, and her love interest, Daniel Quenard, must have the kindest eyes on Planet Earth. Add that bloodsucking, brutish clan of relatives Flroinda must endure, Manuel DeSica's incredible theme, and some rapturous views of the Italian Dolemites, a great turn by Rita Asti as Scazini the cancer-stricken actress.... what a great, great overlooked film this is!!! If the chapter titled "Clara's Date" does not have you in tears and in awe at the wonder of falling in love, well, I don't know... maybe you're dead(!).

Of course, the subtext here is how years of Northenn Italian fascism left the kindest souls vulnerable to being made slaves and martyrs, and the worst their tormentors, even after the fall of Fascism.

Do not overlook this humane and penetrating film.