The Vacation -la Vacanza- - Tinto Brass 1971 -s... ^new^ Jun 2026

The stagnant atmosphere of the house, populated by sycophantic servants and relatives, is disrupted when Immacolata encounters (Franco Nero), a crude, charming, and virile peasant farmer who works on the estate's drainage pumps. Immacolata, stifled by her husband’s sterile intellectualism, begins a surreal and intense affair with Osvaldo. However, as the day progresses, reality and hallucination blur, revealing that neither the escape into "primitive" passion nor the safety of aristocracy offers salvation.

: Rejected by her family, Immacolata takes to the open road. She seeks shelter among the fringes of society—joining a band of gypsies, encountering a traveling underwear salesman, and befriending an eccentric English gentleman named Gigi (played by Redgrave's real-life brother, Corin Redgrave).

(Redgrave), a woman "released" from a mental asylum for a brief holiday, only to find that the "sane" world of the Italian aristocracy and bureaucracy is far more deranged and cruel than the institution she left behind. Redgrave is spectacular, capturing a mix of fragile innocence and fierce independence as she navigates a landscape of exploitation. Why it works: Visual Style: The Vacation -La Vacanza- - Tinto Brass 1971 -S...

: The film acts as a satire of the Italian class system and the psychiatric industry, highlighting how society labels non-conformity as "insanity" to suppress dissent.

La Vacanza premiered at the , where it famously provoked a near-riot. While the audience responded with shouts of "Schifo" (disgusting) and "Basta" (enough), the film was paradoxically awarded the prize for Best Italian Film . The stagnant atmosphere of the house, populated by

The Vacation (-La Vacanza-) – Tinto Brass 1971: A Masterpiece of Political Satire and Avant-Garde Cinema

One of the most striking aspects of La Vacanza is its extraordinary cast, which bridges the worlds of British and Italian cinema. At the center is Vanessa Redgrave, already an internationally acclaimed actress by 1971, known for her work in films such as Blowup (1966), Isadora (1968), and The Devils (1971). Redgrave delivers a remarkable, unglamorous performance as Immacolata, a character far removed from the elegant, sophisticated roles for which she was typically known. She appears disheveled, exhausted, and utterly stripped of vanity, embodying the physical and psychological toll of institutionalization. Remarkably, Redgrave performed her own Italian dialogue in the film, delivering her lines in broken, accented Italian that adds an extra layer of vulnerability and authenticity to the character. The actress famously chose to attend the Venice Film Festival to present La Vacanza rather than Ken Russell’s The Devils , a testament to her commitment to the project. : Rejected by her family, Immacolata takes to the open road

For cinephiles, The Vacation is a fascinating artifact. It showcases Tinto Brass before he fully embraced the "Pop-Erotica" aesthetic. It retains the political bite of his earlier works like The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (though he was uncredited on that project) and Nerosubianco . The film is often cited as a "lost classic" of Italian cinema, valuable for its atmospheric direction and its stark, unromanticized view of human desire.