Brass was heavily influenced by the global counterculture movement. 1971 was a year of protests, sexual liberation, and a rejection of bourgeois values. La Vacanza is his celluloid manifesto of that chaos. It is not a film for passive viewers; it demands engagement, patience, and an openness to what Brass called “the cinema of sensation.” On the surface, La Vacanza (translated as The Vacation ) tells a deceptively simple story. The plot follows a young, restless woman (played with ferocious honesty by Florinda Bolkan) who, after a traumatic stay in a mental institution, is given a weekend leave. She escapes into the Italian countryside, where she encounters a fugitive, a man running from the law and from his own failures.
Buona visione.
But make no mistake—this is not a romantic comedy. Brass injects the film with a sense of impending doom. The free lifestyle comes at a cost. The entertainment is laced with anxiety. The vacation is, ultimately, a death wish disguised as a dance. The keyword here is free lifestyle and entertainment , and La Vacanza delivers this in spades, albeit through a specifically Italian lens. In 1971, Italy was experiencing the “Years of Lead,” a period of social tension and political violence. In response, the youth counterculture created a parallel universe of communes, free love, and psychedelic art. Brass was heavily influenced by the global counterculture
Brass is making a serious point: in a society that criminalizes joy, joy becomes a revolutionary act. The film’s most famous scene involves the two leads dancing to a distorted radio broadcast. There is no audience, no applause. The dance is for themselves alone. It is messy, uncoordinated, and utterly free. That, Brass suggests, is the highest form of cinema. It would be impossible to discuss La Vacanza without acknowledging its troubled release history. Upon its debut in 1971, the film was slapped with a V.M.18 (Visto Ministeriale 18+) certificate in Italy, effectively banning it from minors and restricting it to a handful of art-house cinemas. Critics were split. Some called it “pornographic nihilism.” Others, like the influential Cahiers du Cinéma , hailed it as “a bold fresco of alienation.” It is not a film for passive viewers;
