alr

Swept Away... By an Unusual Destiny in the Blue Sea of August
(Travolti da un insolito destino nell'azzurro mare d'Agosto)

Screening on Film
Directed by Lina Wertmüller.
With Giancarlo Giannini, Mariangela Melato.
Italy, 1975, 35mm, color, 116 min.
Italian with English subtitles.

Raffaella, a rich, beautiful, and acid-tongued Milanese who has charted a yacht, and Gennarino, a swarthy Sicilian deckhand of the working class, are marooned on an isolated island in the Mediterranean. She is a capitalist for whom the system has paid off, he is a dedicated Communist. Cut off from society, Gennarino quickly reverses their roles, stripping Raffaella of pride and vanity. A provocative film that became an enormous art-house success in the U.S., Swept Away put writer-director Lina Wertmüller on the map.

Part of film series

Read more

Treasures from the Harvard Film Archive: Directors U–Z

Current and upcoming film series

Read more

Fragments of a Faith Forgotten: The Art of Harry Smith

Read more

The Yugoslav Junction: Film and Internationalism in the SFRY, 1957 – 1988

Read more

From the Jenni Olson Queer Film Collection

Read more
a double-exposed image that includes a 16th century Russian man being fed grapes by another amid decadent decor

Wings of a Serf

Read more
a close-up of a Bissau-Guinean woman wearing a scarf on her head and looking directly at the camera with a slight smile

Le Dépays + Sans soleil

Read more
Peter Sellers wearing a large hat with "ME" embroidered on it, and gripping a Pilgrim-like collar

Carol for Another Christmas

Read more

Satyajit Ray’s Apu Trilogy