Rent Swept Away (1974)

Sex and Sardines - Swept Away review by CH

What exactly is Swept Away (1974)? A precise answer cannot be given. That is hardly the point of this film, written and directed by Lina Wertmüller, which provides uneasy entertainment off the coast of a sunlit Italy.

Events begin aboard the deck of a private yacht engaged by the husband of Mariangelo Melato for a pleasurable voyage, their nautical and catering needs met by a crew from the South which includes Giancarlo Gianni whose staring eyes are set in a bearded face, all of which is redolent of a man at odds with settled order which finds him below decks and enraged at his culinary skills called into question by the pampered few.

A tense atmosphere becomes all the more so as she demands a journey upon a smaller vessel of which he takes charge. With a failure in its outboard motor and a switch in the current, they become adrift. A dead calm turns otherwise and they reach an uninhabited island where his resemblance to Robinson Crusoe becomes all the more marked. There is also something of Lawrence about all this – even of Castaway – as the relationship between man and woman, peasant and grandee, is played out amidst a struggle to survive, he taking the opportunity for revenge upon her previous denigration of him now that she needs his skills to seek out and then render that flesh into food.

To say more of the narrative would undermine the surprises it contains – and the questions one asks for some while after the credits have gone by. A brilliantly-shot film which plays in each viewer's mind as much it does upon the screen.

As exciting now as when first released - Swept Away review by CW

So glad to be able to watch Lina Wurtmuller’s Swept Away again. Lead actors are absolutely marvellous. They worked with the director on several films. She studied with Fellini. Madonna and Guy Ritchy did a remake but the original is definitely the one to see. Shocking, brutal at times, sexual, romantic, sad. We laughed and gasped. Just wish that Lina Wurtmuller’s Seven Beauties was available in UK. Story takes place on a yacht and later on a gorgeous remote island with pale sand and the clearest water.

Naked Politics. - Swept Away review by Steve

Picturesque Italian sex comedy/political allegory is probably going to be too provocative for modern audiences. It’s an update of JM Barrie’s Admirable Crichton but with (tasteful) nudity and profanity. A super-rich female boss browbeats the poorly paid male staff on her yacht.

But when she and one of her lowly flunkies are washed up on a deserted island, of course the positions are reversed. Only this time the man demands compensation for past wrongs, which isn’t so much sex as her absolute submission. Which she discovers is her ultimate fulfilment.

Naturally, this is intended to represent the conflict between capital and labour, but the erotic content will stimulate a variety of responses. Personally, the male on female violence isn’t acceptable, however symbolic. This is supposed to be comedy and the situations are grotesquely exaggerated, though never actually funny.

Giancarlo Giannini as the grubby socialist and Mariangela Melota as the sexy fascist play it as farce, and it eventually gets a little tiresome. But this is a really well directed film set in gorgeous locations on the coast of Sardinia. And though the sexual politics is dated, the class warfare is still relevant.