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DVD A Brief Vacation
For anyone who's ever yearned for respite from a life of loveless drudgery--or just a break from the daily routine--A Brief Vacation offers a breath of fresh air. Having enjoyed latter-day success with frothy comedies and prestigious acclaim for The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, Vittorio De Sica returned to his neorealist roots (at least partially) with this engaging study of Clara (Florinda Bolkan), an exhausted factory worker in Milan, unappreciated by her demanding family and suffering from the onset of tuberculosis. She's sent to a sanitorium in the Italian Alps for rest and treatment, where she's befriended by wealthy and working-class patients alike, and falls in love with a charming Frenchman (Daniel Quenaud) who promises everything she's denied by her selfish, jealous husband. "It's swoony romanticism from then on," wrote critic Pauline Kael, but A Brief Vacation--and especially Bolkan's marvelous performance, alternately weary and radiant--avoids blatant sentiment, favoring instead the richly emotional study of a woman who has earned the right to elusive happiness. In his final collaboration with the great Italian screenwriter Cesare Zavattini, De Sica harkens back to the heartbreaking truthfulness of Umberto D., while suggesting just enough hope for a better life ahead. --Jeff Shannon
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.
Wow! Finally!!! What a Tender, beautiful Film!
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.
I've been waiting a long time for this!!!
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.
Considered by many to be Federico Fellini's most beautiful and powerful film, La Strada was the first film to reveal the range of Guilietta Masina, whose poignant performance as the childlike Gelsomina recalls Chaplin's Little Tramp. The bubbly, waiflike Gelsomina is a simpleton sold to the gruff, bullying circus strongman Zampanò (Anthony Quinn) as a servant and assistant. Treated no better than an animal, Gelsomina nonetheless falls in love with the brute Zampanò. When they join a small circus they meet Il Matto (Richard Basehart), a clown who enchants Gelsomina and relentlessly taunts Zampanò, whose inability to control his hatred of Il Matto (literally, "the Fool") leads to their expulsion from the circus and eventually to the film's fateful conclusion.... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Anthony Quinn - Giulietta Masina - Richard Basehart Director(s): Federico Fellini DVD Release Date: Released the 18 November 2003 Usually ships in 24 hours
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With this magnificent Criterion DVD release, Luchino Visconti's 1963 historical drama The Leopard will finally earn widespread recognition as one of the most beautiful epics ever produced. In adapting the popular novel by Giuseppe Tomassi di Lampedusa (an Italian equivalent to Gone with the Wind, set during the tumultuous Garibaldi revolution of 1860-62), Visconti was initially reluctant to cast Burt Lancaster as the melancholy Prince of Salina--the aging aristocrat "leopard" of the title--who accepts change as inevitable during the struggle for a unified Italy. But Lancaster (even with his voice dubbed in the fully restored Italian release) delivered one of his finest performances, modeled after Visconti himself, and reacting to political and familial upheavals with the... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Burt Lancaster DVD Release Date: Released the 08 June 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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This 1966 masterpiece by Michelangelo Antonioni (The Passenger) is set in the heady atmosphere of Swinging London, and stars David Hemmings as an unsmiling fashion photographer hooked on ephemeral meaning attached to anything: art, sex, work, relationships, drugs, events. When a real mystery falls into his lap, he probes the evidence for some reliable truth, but finds it hard to reckon with. Vanessa Redgrave plays an enigmatic woman whose desperation to cover something up only seems like one more phenomenon in Hemmings's disinterested purview. This is one of the key films of the decade, and still an unsettling and lasting experience. --Tom KeoghMore Info about this DVD Actor(s): Vanessa Redgrave - David Hemmings Director(s): Michelangelo Antonioni DVD Release Date: Released the 17 February 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Consistently cited by critics worldwide as one of the greatest films ever made, Jean Renoir's bittersweet drama of life, love, class, and the social code of manners and behavior ("the rules of the game") is a savage critique undertaken with sensitivity and compassion. Renoir's catch-phrase through the film, "Everyone has their reasons," develops a multilayered meaning by the conclusion. A young aviator (Roland Toutain) commits a serious social faux pas by alluding to an affair on national radio. To avert a scandal, the cultured Robert de la Chesnaye (Marcel Dalio), husband to the aviator's mistress, Christine (Nora Gregor), and a philanderer in his own right, invites all to a weekend hunting party in his country mansion. The complicated maze of marriages and mistresses (social register... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Nora Gregor - Marcel Dalio Director(s): Jean Renoir DVD Release Date: Released the 20 January 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Luchino Visconti's adaptation of the Thomas Mann novel is the very definition of sumptuous: the costumes and sets, the special geography of Venice, and the breathtaking cinematography combine to form a heady experience. At the center of this gorgeousness is Aschenbach (Dirk Bogarde in a meticulous performance), a controlled intellectual who unexpectedly finds himself obsessed by the vision of a 14-year-old boy while on a convalescent vacation in 1911. Visconti has turned Aschenbach into a composer, which accounts for the lush excerpts from Mahler on the soundtrack (Bogarde is meant to look like Mahler, too). Even if it tends to hit the nail on the head a little too forcefully, and even if Visconti can test one's patience with lingering looks at crowds at the beach and hotel dining rooms,... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Dirk Bogarde Director(s): Luchino Visconti DVD Release Date: Released the 17 February 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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