On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the film (and the soundtrack by Piero Piccioni), we have collected five curiosities about Lina Wertmüller’s masterpiece.

There are works that are often hastily defined as timeless, timeless masterpieces. And yet, films such as Travolti da un insolito destino nell’azzurro mare d’agosto (aka Swept Away) (1974) by Lina Wertmüller find their strength precisely in their precise spatio-temporal, and thus also social and political, context. The film stands on an architecture of gender and class tensions, a direct expression of the turmoil of Italian culture and society in the years of lead. There are trade union demands, the rising feminist struggle, the Sandro Penna-reading champagne socialist intelligentsia and, also, the Mediterranean exotica of Piero Piccioni, whose elegance Italian cinema continues to lack two decades after his death.

As Mariangela Melato herself commented, referring to the remake by Guy Ritchie, often a good script and an evocative location are not enough to turn a film into a masterpiece.

With the oeuvre’s 50th anniversary celebration approaching at the Venice Film Festival, we have collected five curiosities about the work of which CAM Sugar has reissued the David di Donatello-winning soundtrack by Piero Piccioni, in a definitive double vinyl (and CD) edition completely remastered from the original archive tapes and with an exclusive booklet containing rare and unpublished photographs and ephemera, as well as essays – among others – by Jason Piccioni, son of Maestro Piero.

1. Was Swept Away truly a summer film?

Despite its summery iconography, the film was released in the month of December 1974, just ahead of Christmas becoming one of the biggest-grossing box office hits of the season.

2.Grappa for breakfast

Not only the film was released in winter, but it wasn’t shot in the summer neither. The adverse weather also contributed to establish a tense atmosphere on set which, enhanced by the harsh and desertic morphology of the Sardinian landscape, became pivotal in augmenting the realness of the fights between the two protagonists. As recounted by Mariangela Melato, star of the film next to Giancarlo Giannini, in the morning the actors were served Italian cordial grappa instead of coffee for breakfast.

3. A questionable remake

In 2002 famed director Guy Ritchie released his personal remake of the Wertmüller’s classic, starring his then partner Madonna in the role that was of Mariangela Melato and Adriano Giannini, son of Giancarlo, as Gennarino Carunchio. Despite the buzz and the anticipation, the film failed to obtain both critical and commercial success, with Mariangela Melato not concealing her disappoint in public interviews.

4. On set with poetry greats

The fact that Lina Wertmüller was a fine intellectual is certainly nothing new. However, not everyone knows that the poem recited in the film’s finale by a distraught Gennarino Carunchio (Giannini) has its roots in classical lyric poetry, more precisely in an archaic Greek poem attributed to Archiloco or Ipponatte.

‘Traitorous sea, which you once were my friend and then walked over my heart’. The words pronounced by Gennarino (Giannini) in the film’s finale the adaptation by Wertmüller of an archaic Greek lyric attributed to Archiloco or Ipponatte, in its Italian translation by Salvatore Quasimodo.

In the film, however, more space is given to lyric poetry. When, finally, on the beach the carnal passion between the two castaways deflagrates, the bourgeois Raffaella Pavone (Melato) recites verses by Sandro Penna, one of the go-to poets of the Italian intelligentsia of the 1970s. ‘Oh do not give yourself airs of superiority / Only a glance I saw worthy of this / Was a bored child at a party’, taken from Una Strana Gioia di Vivere (1949-1955), is hinted at and embedded in a work capable of becoming national-popular while remaining exceptionally cultured.

5. An unwritten finale

Year after the film, asked about the possibility of a sequel and an alternative ending, Mariangela Melato stood by the script. ‘I would have boarded the helicopter. Love stories come and go, and this would have too.’

To find out more about the behind the scenes of Lina Wertmüller and Piero Piccioni’s masterpiece, you can find the CAM Sugar edition of the soundtrack with an exclusive booklet full of rare images and unpublished ephemera from the record label’s archive, as well as written insights including that of Jason Piccioni, Piero’s son. You can order it on double vinyl and CD at camsugarmusic.com

Opening image: Mariangela Melato and Giancarlo Giannini on the set of Swept Away. Image from the CAM Sugar archive, all rights reserved.