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List Price: $29.95Amazon.com's Price: $26.99 You Save: $2.96 (10%)Prices subject to change.
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Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 0037429185322
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Label: Homevision
Manufacturer: Homevision
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Homevision
Region Code: 1
Release Date: December 16, 2003
Running Time: 112 minutes
Sales Rank: 64322
Studio: Homevision
Theatrical Release Date: February 09, 1975
Editorial Review:
Amazon.com:
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
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - Ladies, bring your hankies for flood control on this sad journey
Florinda Balkan stars as a factory worker battered by her crippled husband who discovers she has lung disease and is send on medical leave to a TB resort in the mountains for treatment. Here she is romanced by a handsome patient from a nearby facility and develops close friendships with her roomates, sharing their triumphs and disappointments while they battle with fates of mortality. The great irony results in that she is cured, but ruined by the fact she must return to her factory work and poor, ... Read More
Rating:  - A Brief Vacation
Italian director Vittorio De Sica returns to my newsletter. THE BICYCLE THIEF, AFTER THE FOX, and this. This one's 1973, Italian with English subtitles, in color. The premise is "sickness is the vacation of the poor." Clara has a lousy husband and a lousy job, but some lung damage sends her to the sanatorium in the mountains. I like the premise. I grew up in the "work til you drop" culture, and in fact I'm still fighting to reprogram myself.
I really wanted to like this movie, as a De ... Read More
Rating:  - one of the very best
This is one of the few foreign films that is extremely realistic without being depressing.
In the first half-hour, we are made not only to see Clara's grim life but to feel it. And this is done without the usual grinding away on the same scene until it becomes unbearable. We get brief touches of so many of the aspects of Clara's life, that the weight of these has more effect that all the belabored scenes of other European films. Clara is the only one earning money. Her husband is ... Read More
Rating: - Want To Get Away?
Perhaps no other director could have made "A Brief Vacation" except for Vittorio De Sica.
De Sica, who directed my favorite film of all time "The Bicyle Thief", is the kind of filmmkaer who is capable of projecting sincere raw emotions in his work. Whether it's "The Bicycle Thief", "Two Women" or "Umberto D." De Sica's films make us care about his characters. We have a full emotional investment in what happens to them.
"A Brief Vacation" tells the story of Clara (Florinda ... Read More
Rating: - Finally available!! Hurrah!!!!!!!!!
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 ... Read More
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