Word: sica
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...Throughout the film. Powell describes the injustice of a system which permits the callous extravagance of the society families he serves as butler, yet when the smoke clears the flowing champagne on Sulton Place drowns the social' criticism which gave the film its force. In the late Vittorio De Sica's final film. A Brief Vacation, we experience a similar tantalizing disappointment, as the director offers sentimental solutions which fail to engage the problems he presents so sharply, the complex plight of working women...
Ophuls's The Earrings of Madams de.... with Darrioux, Charles Boyer and Victoria de Sica, plus a Chaplin short, Sunday, March...
...between this thought-provoking silence and the numbing intrusions on her spirit that we have witnessed in the film's opening sections could not be more vividly evoked. In a directorial career devoted largely to exploring the ways poverty assaults dignity (Shoeshine, The Bicycle Thief, Umberto D), De Sica may have made more forceful statements, but never a more poignant one than he does here with the exquisite assistance of Florinda Bolkan...
...Sica, in his old age, allowed himself a note of ambiguity on this point, ending his film with a thoughtful closeup of Clara on the train bearing her back to reality. It seems just possible that besides restoring her physical health, her brief vacation may also have strengthened her mental balance. The energy formerly burned in impotent rage may possibly be turned outward, in an effort to make a permanent purchase on the modestly decent life she has been permitted to glimpse...
...that is left unclear. But it is certain that De Sica's last collaboration with his old colleague Cesare Zavattini is a wise, delicate and moving work, a worthy ending for an extraordinarily valuable career. ∎Richard Schickel