The Vacation -la Vacanza- - Tinto Brass 1971 -s...
The film was a deeply personal project for its leads; Vanessa Redgrave and Franco Nero (a real-life couple at the time) co-produced and financed the 16mm production out of their own pockets following their collaboration on Brass's previous film, Dropout .
What do you think? Is this a forgotten masterpiece or a frustrating failure? For more deep dives into the world of cult and forgotten cinema, keep exploring with us.
It offers a biting critique of Italian social norms, familial duty, and mental health management. The Vacation -La Vacanza- - Tinto Brass 1971 -S...
The screenplay was written by Brass in collaboration with Vincenzo Maria Siniscalchi and Roberto Lerici. Lerici, a writer and linguistic researcher, contributed significantly to the film’s dialogue, drawing on the Veneto dialect and the earthy, rustic language of the playwright Ruzante. Most strikingly, the lyrics for the film’s songs were adapted from so-called “schizophrenic poems”—texts written by actual psychiatric patients that Siniscalchi discovered in a Neapolitan journal called Carte Segrete and within a mental institution itself. This direct incorporation of the voices of the mentally ill gives the film a documentary-like authenticity and a profound respect for its subject matter.
La Vacanza was his thesis: The bourgeoisie does not need to be overthrown from the outside. It will implode from its own sexual and emotional impotence. The “vacation” is a metaphor for the false promise of consumer freedom. You can drive a fast car and wear expensive sunglasses, but if your soul is dead, you are already a ghost. The film was a deeply personal project for
Yet, audience reception has historically been baffled. A famous contemporary review on IMDb notes: “Ultimately, the biggest mystery surrounding this film... is how it managed to get named ‘Best Italian Film’” . However, modern reappraisals are kinder. The film has been described as “irreverent, provocative, anarchic and grotesque... a masterpiece of denunciation against psychiatry” .
Fortunately, the resilient heroine escapes and falls into the company of Osiride (Franco Nero), a charismatic poacher and anarchist. Together, the two outcasts roam the foggy Po Delta countryside, stealing chickens, evading the law, and picking up a bizarre entourage that includes a wandering peddler, an English ornithologist (played by Vanessa’s real-life brother Corin Redgrave), and a trio of gypsies. For more deep dives into the world of
Plays the sympathetic poacher who becomes an ally in her journey.
But paradise is temporary. The couple is hunted down, imprisoned, and repeatedly separated. The denouement has been described as one of the most bizarre climaxes in 70s cinema: Immacolata finds work in the Count’s factory, where she leads the prostitutes there in a silent, erotic revolt, weaving cloth while experiencing a collective orgasm. When Osiride returns to save her, he is mercilessly gunned down by the police. Broken and defeated, Immacolata is dragged back to the psychiatric ward, her "vacation" officially terminated.
Immacolata is bored to the point of catatonia. Guglielmo is a silent, brooding presence who communicates more with his guitar (playing a haunting, unreleased solo composed specifically for the film) than with his lover. They stop at a gas station, a hotel, a deserted beach. Nothing happens in the traditional narrative sense. Instead, Brass turns the camera into a voyeuristic scalpel.
