Una breve vacanza

A Brief Vacation is a quiet Italian drama from 1973, directed by Vittorio De Sica who was acclaimed for The Bicycle Thief a quarter century earlier.

Florinda Bolkan plays a female factory worker in Milan whose husband's employment has been sidelined for the time being by injury. Thus she is the breadwinner for a family that includes children, a mother-in-law, and a brother-in-law. She already is close to collapse from the wear and tear of her job, and the fatigue of the train commutes to and from it. Family members prove extremely selfish, increasing the stress and burden.

But she has a spot on her lung, a patch of tuberculosis, the equivalent of a golden war wound in combat. There is insurance for health care, and a guarantee of a continued flow of salary during leave for recuperation. The movie makes a welcome shift to a sanatorium in the Alps, where the only demands are to get plenty of sleep and rest and be pampered by the doctors, nurses, and other staffers. This is the brief vacation from which the movie title derives, and brings a chance to meet new friends and a pause to reflect on life. De Sica via the interruption produces another winner.

It might be added that it was a long wait to see the movie again. A Brief Vacation was never released on VHS, and consequently it took three full decades, and the advent of the DVD era, to bring the film to home viewers. Take advantage.

Be like a train; go in the rain, go in the sun, go in the storm, go in the dark tunnels! Be like a train; concentrate on your road and go with no hesitation!" Mehmet Murat ildan

Trains are featured prominently in this film. Without them, our heroine, Florinda Bolkan wouldn't be able to go to work, or even mountain retreat. Like trains, she would go on with her life journey - with no regrets and hesitations, in spite of tears.

Finally available on DVD. I had 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, first making a last-minute detour 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.

Those viewers who are feeling a little down about their own particular life situation may be a bit cheered when they see what Clara Mataro's daily grind is like, in Vittorio de Sica's 1973 offering "A Brief Vacation." The sole breadwinner in her family, living in a dingy, cramped apartment on the outskirts of Milan with her loutish husband, thuggish brother-in-law, waspishly senile mother-in-law and three young sons, her torturous job at a rubber factory is just another element in her daily hell. No wonder that when the National Health clinic forces her to go to a sanatorium in the Italian Alps to cure her incipient TB, Clara views this as the titular brief vacation. (If only the U.S. had a health care system like this!) Away from her usual troubles and surrounded by new friends, Clara inevitably blossoms, and that metamorphosis is wonderful to see. Florinda Bolkan, who had greatly impressed me in such marvelous gialli as "Lizard in a Woman's Skin" and "Don't Torture a Duckling," is superb here as Clara, especially when the prospect of a possible love affair at the sanatorium arises. Clara's fellow patients are a very interesting bunch; de Sica, the old neorealist master, directs winningly yet unobtrusively; son Manuel de Sica's theme song "Stay" is lush and superromantic; and the snowy backdrop of the Alpine countryside is often quite spectacular. So, does the film give poor Clara the reward of a happy ending? I would never dream of telling, but those who have seen such earlier de Sica classics as "The Bicycle Thief" and "Umberto D" might be able to guess. Clara Mataro is a remarkably well-drawn character, and my feeling is that most viewers will be very happy that they have spent a few brief hours with her....

This is the story of a woman given a respite from her grim life as a devoted wife and mother. She takes her illness in stride and goes off to the mountains to a sanatorium for a cure. While there, she meets people she would never have met otherwise and has time to experience a life other than one of drudgery and selfless devotion. She is even given a chance of escape/salvation. Will she take it? Ah, but that would be a spoiler!

This superb movie shows that realism can be moving and gripping. This woman's plight, her decency and her quiet heroism make for one of the best motion pictures ever made. If it could be released on video or DVD, I'm sure it would do well. Let's hope the owner of the rights to this movie soon figures this out.