Despite the shrewish bitching of Rafaella and the grumbling of the sailor help- this is a very thought-provoking movie. What especially helps is the cinematography- by Wertmuller's husband- the white sailor uniform, the black diaphanous garb of R. and the blue sea as backdrop. As the affair progressed from hate to a passionate love the changes in body language is well done. Though I saw this movie many years ago- its power to address class wars, the battle between men and women and in inevitable conclusion has never left me.
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lib-43 November 1998
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morgan197619 October 2002I really loved this movie. I have to admit I only saw this because I heard of Madonna's remake and my love for the Goldie Hawn movie "Overboard", but...wow! Interesting, romantic, powerful, hard-to-watch, political, funny, sad, etc. This movie has it all. You can analyze this movie to death, but it will do it a disservice. Quite simply, it's about a bizarre romance that happens when two people who are total opposites, thus hating each other, are stranded on a remote island and must learn how to live together. By today's standards, this is a very un-P.C. movie: Male domination over a woman. However, it IS just a movie, not real life--don't let that put you off; and there are some scenes that are hard to take, but given the context of the characters, you might think to yourself--"is this deserved?" I think some parts are, and others--not at all. You might like this film if you liked Pedro Almodovar's "Atame! (Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down!)". This is a film you'll end up discussing with others after you've seen it. Also, I don't recommend viewing this around children or very impressionable teenagers.
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A trip into the Mediterranean sea becomes a trip into the discovery of how society's frameworks of the rich and poor are delicate and temporary.
In his review in the Chicago Sun-Times, American film critic Roger Ebert gave the film four stars, his highest rating. Ebert wrote that the film "resists the director's most determined attempts to make it a fable about the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, and persists in being about a man and a woman. On that level, it's a great success." I'm on board with Ebert. I think this film was exceptional. Emotionally, it was raw, and I have to praise the performers and the director for the intensity. How you get a love story out of deep economic and political hatred, I don't know, but they pull it off. And despite the violence and abuse, there is something deeper here. Really a great film with something powerful to say. -
TheArt18 October 2000I feel that many of the comments for 'Swept Away...' slightly miss the point. Certainly, it is about politics. But Wertmuller is not taking sides between her communist & capitalist heros. She is examining what happens when they are removed from the society that defines their roles and their relationship.
Once the balance of power is reversed, they essentially change places. He becomes dominant (and often abusive). She becomes weak and submissive. The rough sex, etc. is all symbolic of how the poor are treated by the rich. And Wertmuller shows us that the 'working class hero' has no inherent nobility. Put in the position of power, he is every bit as cruel as his former oppressors. Once they return to society, the balance of power is once again reversed.
The message here is that there are no political heros and villains. Power is relative and arbitrary. And sadly, it is our nature to abuse it. The lesson is, perhaps, that we must rise above that base instinct and treat our fellow men with empathy and generosity. "We have met the enemy, and he is us." -
zetes22 November 2002A film that's exceedingly difficult to pin down. It would be easy to dismiss it, but it's just as easy to be startled and amazed by it. The story's simple enough: a shaggy, dark-skinned man (played by Giancarlo Gianni) works under the thumb of the bourgoisie on a hired yacht. He despises them, and they despise him. One of these rich people is particularly annoying, a blonde woman (Mariangelo Melato), who spends her days incessantly bitching, spouting capitalist slogans, and putting down the servant class. These two characters, not surprisingly, end up together on a dinghy whose motor has broken. She never shuts up, he stares at her murderously. They eventually land on a deserted island, where he refuses to help her whatsoever. She eventually has to submit to whatever abuses he chooses to dish out. Yes, that does include physical and eventually a near-rape, which will certainly disgust and upset a lot of the film's audience. The film can actually be sort of perverse. I'm sure many have marvelled that, with some of the film's crueller scenes, the film was directed by a woman. It is actually, in its way, nearly as perverse at some times as The Night Porter, directed in the very same year in Italy, also by a woman. That film's merits are more dubious than Swept Away's, however. The film is unexpectedly hilarious, at least for the first forty-five minutes or so. When the abuse starts, the film begins to shift to a social issues picture. Class issues are important, as well as racial issues (which kind of amount to the same thing). I didn't mind seeing the woman verbally abused - she spent the first forty-five minutes doing the same to the guy. The smackings she receives were hard for even me to take, however. The politics are nevertheless exceedingly interesting. The film has some very good material on the social constructions of class. After this section of the film, the story shifts to erotica, and it is very erotic at times. In this section, the film is a direct descendent of Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris (as was The Night Porter, incidentally). After that, the film shifts once again to romantic melodrama, as the two are rescued. The man makes the decision to signal a yacht that he sees in the distance simply because he wants to test the deep love that the woman swears by. These shifts in narrative can be clearly felt, like upshifting in a manual transmission vehicle, but it works rather well. I was always right with the film with its emotions (although it took me a good twenty minutes to get into the film). I ended up rather loving it, despite its flaws. Now I actually want to see the Madonna version to see how bad that hack Guy Ritchie screwed it up. At one point in the film the man tells the woman that she looks like the Madonna. Pretty funny, no? 9/10.
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Arriflex130 July 2004Back in the 1970's Lina Wertmuller was an art-house superstar. But more importantly, she was a first class original, bursting with a fresh, exciting vision.
Now, here's a lively storyline: a rich, racist, reactionary female- a right wing, fascist mind in a knuckle-biting, voluptuous body -is stranded on a mid-sea desert isle with a poverty-stricken, chauvinistic, Communist male- a left-leaning propagandist in a scrawny masculine body. "Make nice" they don't. Well, not right off the bat. Not before much nasty invective and grievous bodily assault take place. But then afterward....ahh, afterward.
SWEPT AWAY, though a foreign film, is in the manic, irreverent, well-timed tradition of Hollywood screwball comedies like THE AWFUL TRUTH(1937), MIDNIGHT(1939), THE LADY EVE(1941), and most emphatically, HIS GIRL FRIDAY(1940)- only with a shipload more profane repartee, orgiastic lust, and bone-crunching physicality than was ever permissible or desirable in those older classics. Throwing all vestiges of caution to the four winds, Wertmuller really surprises the viewer with her take on the battle of the genders strained through a volcanic political dialectic.
Upon its initial release many in the audience demurred strongly (and still do) as the male's dominance slipped into outright brutality. Certainly, Wertmuller can be accused of going too far, but never of boring us. Giancarlo Giannini and Mariangelo Melato are absolutely letter perfect: sulking, teasing, attacking, retreating, seducing, rampaging, abandoning. Their director spurs them through an emotional and physical gauntlet and they meet each dramatic challenge with winning artistry. You may feel wrung out by film's end. Or enraged. Or both. But you'll have quite a time. -
planktonrules1 March 2007This film is a time capsule of the 1970s in Italy and today many who view the film may not understand the context. At that time, there was quite a political schism in the country between the conservative and leftist wings of government. So this film can be enjoyed on two levels--one being a microcosm of the political and philosophical differences between the far right and far left. To me, though, this is not a great strength of this film, as the female lead is just too far right to be representative of the average political conservative--just the most rabidly extreme and one-dimensional. She was more a combination of a Fascist and ultra-Capitalist who sees the common people as riffraff to do her bidding--a horrid combination to say the least! He, on the other hand, was very pro-Communist but seemed like a much more reasonable person. So, if this WAS intended as political satire, the deck was definitely unfairly stacked in one direction--but it is still very interesting.
Now if you DON'T see this as political satire, it's a much more enjoyable film. Instead of all the Italian politics, it's basically the story of a super-rich and super-selfish woman (Mariangela Melato) who mistreats everyone she considers her inferior (i.e., anyone not rich). On board a luxury yacht that was chartered, she is constantly demanding, whiny and NEVER appreciative of anything--treating those working on the ship as if they were idiots. You REALLY wanted to see something horrid happen to her! One of the crew members who comes to hate her most (and deservedly so) is Giancarlo Giannini--who is simply tired of her abuse but has held his tongue in order to keep his job.
Eventually, through a strange series of events orchestrated by Melato, she and Giannini become shipwrecked on a deserted island. While there is fresh water and enough to eat, life is hard and the lady is ill-prepared for survival--as she expects Giannini to continue playing the role of a servant!! Well, this doesn't last long as their primitive lifestyle also calls for a more primitive relationship--with Giannini playing the strong clan leader and Melato as HIS servant!!! At first, she balks at this--that is until he brutalizes her until she shuts up and does everything she is told! This is very satisfying to watch. Rarely would I enjoy seeing anyone slapped around, but believe me, the writers did a great job of setting this up and getting the viewer to sympathize.
Now where the film goes next is probably pretty realistic but also makes this a VERY adult film. Considering that they both are relatively young and good-looking, it's not surprising that the film becomes very sexual. I understand why the film went this direction but this makes it totally inappropriate for kids or even teens--especially when he ultimately forces himself on her. In addition, later they discuss sodomy--another topic most responsible parents don't want the little kids learning about from a film!! This aspect may also make the film uncomfortable for many adult viewers--particularly rape victims. However, if you are able to look beyond this, the film is in many ways quite erotic and even romantic.
There is really MUCH more to the film than this. The film is super original, fascinating and well-made. It just MIGHT not be what you are looking for--please consider the content of this film before watching.
UPDATE 9/10--I just saw the silent movie "Male and Female" which was based on the J.M. Barrie play "The Admiral Crichton" and can now see where the writer/director of "Swept Away" got her inspiration. Clearly "Swept Away" is a re-working of this earlier story, though unlike Lina Wertmüller's strong secular-humanist/communist leanings, the silent film was, at times, very preachy and religious. Interesting and a film fans of Wertmüller should see. -
The entire premise of the accidentally positioned relationship of the sailor with the rich and spoiled woman is entirely contrived and like a very well oiled opera, it spins in surprising circles, taking us to places we did not anticipate when we first meet the characters.
Where it could have fallen into a parody or in its simplest form, a Marxist diatribe, the director raises the form into metaphor and both shocks and surprises us along the way. I can imagine that when this film first came out in 1974, the public must have gasped at several things: there are several moments in the film when the sailor just explodes in a rageful outpouring of physical abuse to the lovely lady. In short, he beats her about the face and wrestles with her until she is quite roughed up. The repeated slapping is still hard to watch, even if you think in your mind that these are well trained actors. The overt machismo that the sailor humiliates the lady with is both laughable and grotesque by our standards. Sure the film is making fun of Italian men and especially at the expense of the so-called coarser Southern Italian men and even more the Sicilian men....but it is so overdone that it too rises to metaphor. He struts about like a liberated tyrant, cave-man, looking for every opportunity to enjoy sweet revenge over his hapless companion. What does he achieve? He certainly does break her down and destroys every vestige of her snobby, boorish, disrespectful, artificial outer self and when pealed away what emerges is her long suppressed tender and humbled self. Listen: some people, usually men, go and seek some lunatic guru up in the mountains to help them attain this type of simplicity and humility, so the idea in itself is not far fetched. The difference is that this lady did not choose her fate on the island, did not go seeking humility; it was the only way to survive and in a way here lies an important aspect of Wertmuller's film. Is she asking us: what control do we have when forces much greater than us (poverty in particular as exemplified by the sailor and his laments) push us to limits of endurance? What type of people do we become? Wertmuller is also asking us: the rich have so many more choices, including cultivating their own sense of place and humility in the world and that they do not cannot be attributed to the same stresses that tear apart the poor. I'm simplifying but this seems to be one of the underlying themes.
Other themes: the sailor takes advantage of a situation that presents itself in his life for the first time. Sure he's been working hard all his life and he's still the lackey cleaning up the crap of the rich. And, he's totally unappreciated by his family. Now, he can work just as hard but call ALL of the shots including sexual domination and physical appreciation. He certainly did not set out to win over the lovely lady but after seeing how dependent she was and how unaware of her own self sufficiency, he saw an opportunity to dominate and over a woman! The temptation was too great to let alone. She is everything he has fantasized about (without admitting it) and he taunts her with the very same thoughts.
And then let's look at passion and love. Where the chemical attraction ends (and by the last third of the film there is plenty of that) there appears to be true and passionate love. At this point I started to feel completely caught up in their torrid affair and the tenderness the sailor finally gives to her just melts your heart. Underneath all that caveman behavior is a very soft hearted and loving man, who never had an outlet for his feelings. Sure he acts like a child, demanding love only on his terms, but that's not the point. They are both childish in their own ways. What the film leaves in your mind...how is it that such diametrically opposed and different people can scratch and crawl their way into passionate and REAL love? And while the film leaves you believing in the truth of their passions, it evaporates at the end, leaving me, at least, very upset at the outcome. Of course Wurtmuller could have opted for the happy ending and then what? In a sense it would have become just too ridiculous, becoming a lampoon of what was uncovered between them. In life, these types of illicit affairs are very often ephemeral and while short lived, very hot. And then they disappear into thin air. Do we seek the romantic ending we wished the film to have taken or do we accept the bitterness of the sailor, cursing much more than the rich lady: his fate yet again returning as bitter as ever; he returning to be a smelly lout of a husband, dragging behind his wife as she barely endures his presence.
Giannini gives a towering performance which although teeters on comic self parody, he inhabits his role and lets his inner self evolve as the moment changes. Never over acting even when in a full rage, showing gentleness and hot passion in perfect balance, he is awesome as the rough edged sailor, going nowhere in life. Mariangela Melato is simply gorgeous and sexy and has the time of her life with this role. The two of them took risks as actors but the sparks all seemed so real. You just don't see movies made like this today because we live in politically correct times. Films like this and Linsday Anderson's "IF" would either shock us or else would have been ignored as too artsy. I loved this film and the way it moved my heart. -
Merely18 February 2000Sometimes, there is nothing better than just a simple tale, easy to follow, with breathtaking scenery. Wonderfully acted story that draws you in. Giancarlo Giannini is THE best Italian actor of his time. And as a bonus, with the explicit subtitles, you can learn how to curse in Italian! While the abusive male behaviour is not terribly pc these days, it reflects the culture of some European countries. All in all shows why foreign films are so different from American films. Viva la difference!
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disinterested_spectator7 December 2014Raffaella, who is a rich woman, her husband, and their rich friends rent a yacht and go sailing in the Mediterranean. She and her husband carry on screaming arguments about political ideology, with Raffaella expressing her fascist views with much vehemence. We all expect Italians in movies to be passionate, but we have never seen anything like this. Gennarino is a deckhand and a communist, whom she treats like dirt.
When Raffaella and Gennarino get stranded on a deserted island, he decides to reverse roles with a vengeance. He beats her into submission, forcing her to call him Signor Carunchio, while calling her Raffaella (when not calling her a bitch or an industrial whore), instead of Signora Lanzetti, as he did on board the yacht. Then, when all this verbal and physical abuse has finally made her want him to ravish her brutally, he says that is not enough. She must tell him she loves him, kiss his feet, and worship him like a god. She actually does kiss his feet and submit to him totally, falling madly in love with him. But he still beats her whenever she misbehaves, as when she presumes to think instead of doing what she is told.
This may be a minor point, but it is odd that Gennarino, the communist, believes that women should be totally subservient to men, which we would be more likely to associate with fascism.
Anyway, the day finally arrives when a boat comes within sight of the island. Raffaella does not want to signal them because she fears being rescued might spoil their happiness. But Gennarino believes that only if they are rescued can he be sure that she truly loves him. Once rescued, Raffaella might have been able to thwart public opinion and marry Gennarino, but when she sees him being greeted by his wife, who talks about their children, she has misgivings. But given Gennarino's attitude toward women, why should he care about what happens to his wife? He wants Raffaella to go back and live on the island with him, but she decides against it. He reverts to calling her a bitch and an industrial whore.
Because this is a comedy, we hesitate to take it too seriously, but there simply is not enough humor in this movie to overcome the revulsion we feel at the way he treats her, especially since the movie seems to prove he is right in believing that a man can make a woman love him by degrading her and beating her. -
professortiki17 August 2020Much has been said about this unique film in other reviews, so I do not need to repeat a summery of the story. Let me just add three more aspects:
This film contains beautiful pictures of the mediteranean landscape on a remote lonely island. Lina Wertmüller dips her images into all kinds of different magical colors. You want to be there forever and that's exactly what adds to the story of an outer-worldly romance.
Secondly the film has great music. The exact funky easy type that has been reissued on so many lounge compilation CDs during the 1990s.
And last not least this film reminds us of the fact that feminism once was all but about protection zones and a new puritanism. Women embraced freedom, wildness and radical romanticism over a boring protective conventional social construct. And feminist filmmakers, which Lina Wertmüller surely is one of, preferred to tell stories of real life over predictable gender-political statements. This film does not judge, it simply shows, merciless, but also with a lot of love and an incredible sense of beauty. It may not be easy to swallow for many, but it should rather make them aware of their own inner prisons. -
I was watching the 2003 version of swept away and it was horrible to begin with I will write a review on the movie at their site.
But first about this movie let me start by saying it doesn't stand the test of time but is still believable that the relationship turns into something real in the island.. A lot of scene and dialogue seems real especially Gennarino demanded Lanzetti to call him Mr. Carrunchio not master as the remake done it although there is violence but it was kept minimal comparative to the remake
What make this a classic Italian movie is the content and the dialogue is much more believable and half way through the movie I truly believe there is love in the air for them
The final act is much more simple compared to the remake And I'm a bit disappointed because it does not show the struggle of Gennarino. -
rhombus2 December 1999A disclaimer: perhaps I lack the historical context to appreciate this movie's boldnesses, and perhaps I have a prejudice against Italian films -- I've seen very few that I like, and usually find them pretentious, obscure, and far inferior to, say, the French or Scandinavian cinema.
But that aside, I thought this movie was really quite lousy. This movie's supposed insights into the dialogue of the sexes (and the classes) are hardly deeper than your average cartoon -- and, as the movie progresses, rapidly become far more offensive: while I don't have any trouble with the considerable sexual content per se, I find the treatment of rape and violence to be unpleasant at best. If the script were better and the leads weren't two-dimensional archetypes, it might be a bit more convincing, but instead we get something that's scarcely any more rewarding or thoughtful than soft-core pornography. In fairness, I must admire Wertmuller's bravado, and the last 15 minutes or so are actually pretty good. There are also a few moments of genuine pathos, comedy, and erotic tension. But on the whole, the movie just leaves me feeling a little bit dirty and disgusted...and watching it with my girlfriend -- who was, in fact, physically abused by a previous boyfriend -- left me all the more aware of its unpleasantness. Maltin's four-star review in his movie guide is way, way overkill; I might give it two for ambition, but really, it barely merits one-and-a-half. -
JimHammond14 October 2002This was one of those few movies that can stay in your mind for decades. I still remember the scene where the rabbit is caught in the trap and slain. This, along with "Seven Beauties", is Wurtmuller's at her best. I have no intention of seeing the Madonna remake.
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bosscain24 November 2003this film is superb, the cast and characters were great,made you feel like you were actually part of the movie.great story with out the fairy tale ending but in turn a real life ending that makes this story even more believable.
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lasttimeisaw21 February 2019Not the blamed notorious 2002 Guy Ritchie-Madonna remake, this is Lina Wertmüller's original masterpiece, a tactfully veiled feminist treatment that removes the class barrier by marooning a snooty capitalist socialite Raffaella (Melato) and a plebeian Communist deckhand Gennarino (Gianninni), together in an uninhabited island in the middle point, and what ensues is a taming-the-shrew sex romp, that lives and dies with the island itself.
Doesn't see eye to eye with each other prima facie, the pair wears their heart on their sleeves with a mutual despite that feels both comical and vitriolic, and Wertmüller perceptively demands Raffaella to make a meal of her airs of superiority that naturally elicits our sympathy towards the downtrodden Gennarino, piteously cussing underhandedly with a puppy-eyed scruffiness, even when the duo is left drifting afloat in a dinghy on the Mediterranean Sea (nigh Sardinian Eastern coast), the unseaworthy Raffaella has nothing else to do but whinges about Gennarino's inadequacy.
Once they are shipwrecked in an island, Raffaella's peccadillo comes home to roost when their roles are inevitably reversed, totally at the mercy of Gennarino's survival skill in the nature, she has to endure numerous slaps and a rape attempt before completely submitting herself as a slave at the beck and call of her master, the almighty, proletariat Gennarino, who is confident enough that his virile masculinity can not only subjugate the vain, bourgeoise dame he finds attractive, but also make her fall in love with him (as there is no other competitions in sight), and ostensibly, that is what happens afterward, at that point, our sympathy is miraculously veered toward a docile and besotted Raffaella, a reborn woman, isn't she?
It is facile to accuse Wertmüller of being misogynist merely on the grounds that she subjects Raffaella repeatedly to physical abuse in the hand of Gennarino, she is astute enough to wield a Teflon shield not just because she is a woman herself, thus the violence can be viewed as a self-reflexive conceit to reflect the horrible reality, but more intricately, to point up the weaker sex's powerless physical plight is her ingenious approach to counterpoint a woman's staggering resilience, both physically and mentally, to the point that, Gennarino, as a macho man overtly boasting his dominant nature, has no rival to overpower her in the long run on the intellectual level, because he can never see her through if he cannot treat her as an equal (if not superior). Felt both smitten and suspect by her affection, Gennarino's fatal mistake is that he is tricked into believing Raffaella's oscillation, thinks that he has a chance of winning that kind of true love a man could ever covet.
Therefore when they return to the civilization, instantly the upper hand is returned to the rich party, and Wertmüller brilliantly enfolds Raffaella with an even more ambiguous halo, lachrymose and lovey-dovey during the telephone scene with Gennarino, yet, it is clear as day to audience that she will never return to that God-forsaken place of her own accord, the table has been turned and she wins, but instead of strutting in front of the vanquished (as usually a man inclines to do), being a sophisticated woman, she quickly learns from her mistakes and knows a really visceral revenge is to make the vanquished perpetually guessing, fancying, and ever longing for that pipe dream, which is exactly what happens in the end, a woebegone Gennarino is again, returns to his normal life of a loveless marriage, rues the day that he was once a king bestowed with a perfect consort.
Even most of the time there are only two main characters, an Italian film can still be persistently boisterous with flying vituperation and expletives intermittently assaulting our aural sensory to the four winds, both Mariangela Melato and Giancarlo Giannini are the crèmes de la crème, tearing into the battle-of-sexes with mind-boggling conviction, incredible physical facility and top-notch comic timing, and their raucous interplay can go from high skylarking to searing drama on a moment's notice, moreover, their distinctive personae substantially offset many unsavory traits in their characters, and altogether burnishes Wertmüller's eloquent allegory that nails the essence of stereotyped gender roles, class disparity and human beings' most primeval instinct. Intriguingly, the protagonist of most films and books about a sole survivor in the nature is man, which might obliquely certify that man is more of a nature animal whereas woman is a social one, ergo, it is fairly clear who occupies a higher standing in the evolution tree. -
julialowe-8150918 December 2019Forget the tawdry remake and the many meet cute films of this kind Swept Away spawned, this is a must watch film for any lover of film, philosophy and sociology. For those in search of a little romance, Swept Away can be seen as a love story, albeit an unconventional one. Its approach will disturb some - that a woman can fall in love with a man who abuses her, both physically and emotionally. However, those who criticize the film on this level are ignoring two important points. First, the female actually starts the abuse with her constant berating of the male on the yacht. Secondly, this "romance" is not taking place in anything resembling a civilized situation - by virtue of their circumstances, the characters have been thrown back into a setting that mimics prehistoric times, when survival (of the individual and of the species) dictated coupling. This is great cinema whether you like comedy, drama or just plain thinking.
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If you ever see Italian director Lina Wertmueller's "Swept away by a Mysterious Destiny in the Blue Sea of August" at a DVD store, or Netflix, or the TV guide, please do not dismiss it as being the same as "Swept Away" with Madonna, which was an incredibly boring film from beginning to end. Wertmueller's "Swept away by a Mysterious Destiny in the Blue Sea of August" is so much better than that.
During the early 1970s, Lina Wertmueller went through what was arguably the most creative period in her career. She was writing and directing films like "Love and Anarchy," "Seven Beauties" and "Swept away by a Mysterious in the Blue Sea of August." And what is so great about this latter film with such a long title? For one, "Swept Away" is actually about something: Marxism, class struggle, love on a deserted island and people rediscovering themselves and these themes are all dealt with in a novel and highly intelligent way. "Swept Away" has great actors, like Giancarlo Giannini as the sexist and communist Italian sailor Gennarino Carunchio and Mariangela Melato as the snobbish Italian aristocrat Rafaella Lanzetti, who are transformed into lovers by the crucible of class warfare while on a deserted island. The great thing about these two characters, Gennarino and Rafaella, is that they are not solely good or solely evil. They possess many bad and good traits and we discover, over the course of the film, that although they do horrible things to each other (Gennarino is by far the worst) we end up sympathizing with them on a human level in spite of ourselves.
For these three reasons alone - the plot, the actors and the character development - this film already has a home run. But in addition, "Swept Away" is also a wonderfully musical film which breathes life into the gorgeous cinematography of the deserted island in particular and imbues each visual with meaning. A brilliant film. -
jackrabbitslims-130 July 2002pretty chill italian flick, it shows the drastic changes of 2 people when there is a change of environment, I never would of expected such graphic scenes by a female filmmaker. you'll have to see it to see what i mean
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lee_eisenberg13 September 2005One of Lina Wertmuller's frequent themes is how Northern Italy often looks down on Southern Italy. Nowhere does she explore this better than in "Swept Away". While on a tour in the Mediterranean, spoiled, pro-Fascist Northern Italian Raffaela Pavone Lanzetti (Mariangela Melato) orders Sicilian deckhand Gennarino Carunchio (Giancarlo Giannini) to take her to the grotto so she can go swimming before dinner. Lo and behold, the boat conks out and they end up an uncharted island (no, this isn't "Gilligan's Island" here). Raffaela treats Gennarino like dirt at first, but after he explodes at her, she grows to respect him.
Like I said, this was Lina Wertmuller's best treatment of Northern-Southern Italian relations. -
Great direction and actors. intelligent. intense. verbal. in my top 20 Italian movies. the director is very talented .
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ttor18 February 2000I guess that this movie is an excellent example of "different strokes for different folks" - but I found our obnoxious, doe-eyed "hero's" continual attempts to humiliate our obnoxious "heroine" tiresome. And I found offensive the portrayal of his routine physical abuse (rape, punches, etc.) as behavior that was helping her become a more compassionate human being. This movie gets my double YUK.
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danaluke13 May 2002A totally compelling story of two totally disparate people (rich vs. poor, capitalist vs. communist, helpless vs. capable, male vs. female) put into a life and death situation, and the love that develops when the barriers that society had put between them evaporate.
25 years after it was made, this movie still has lots to say and says it with a great script, solid acting, and lush location shooting. The message of the movie is as valid today as it was then.
There is a sort of "rape" scene, which may offend the politically correct... but then again, what doesn't offend these people?
My favorite line is from the rape scene, as a matter of fact. The sexual tension has mounted between the two principal characters who are stranded together on an island and the final barrier between them is about to come tumbling down. As the beautiful but hapless woman (whose makeup enhanced looks are now starting to fade in the harsh environment) puts up some token resistance, the dirty little Sicilian sailor slaps her and says, "Shut up and let me f**k you while you still look good!" It's a classic.
One last thing... the idiot factory that is modern Hollywood is releasing a re-make of sorts of this movie... starring Madonna. Please see the original before this suck-fest of a remake comes out and tarnishes this beautiful movie's legacy. -
famdoc-24 June 2000What begins as an almost farcical contrast between the working class sailor and the rich bitch on her yacht evolves into an engrossing tale of the need for love and companionship that completely changes the power relationships between the characters. What could have been a dreamy fantasy is repeatedly brought back to earth by details of real human psychology: revenge, compassion, hope and betrayal. I've seen this film at least half a dozen times and it always leaves me thinking and wondering. The cinematography is ethereal and the characters are painfully believeable.
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christopher-underwood4 December 2013Sensational film! What a discovery I consider this to be. I had never even heard of the (female) director before but am completely sold, not only ordering more right away but even ordering the Madonna remake that I wasn't even aware of. I'm sure that will be a disappointment but I wonder if it is really as bad as some make out, for this is a really tough little tale. Strong political and socio-political elements together with increasingly controlling and sadistic sexual goings on as a rich socialite in all her finery and extreme right wing views gets marooned with the much despised communist deck hand. Some elements are a bit dated but from the almost screwball first section through the hardening and desperate survivalist relationship stage, this is absorbing and thrilling stuff. There is much here to delight, upset, and thrill but not for the tender hearted.