Swept Away

Swept Away (1974) is Lina Wertmüller's savage Italian tragicomedy you can watch online on iFILM. Raffaella, a wealthy yachtswoman, and Gennarino, a Communist deckhand she treats like dirt, drift away from a Mediterranean cruise and wash up alone on a deserted island.

At sea the rules were simple: she barked orders, he carried her bags and swallowed the insults. On the island those rules invert. He knows how to spear a fish and light a fire; she knows nothing — and the sailor collects on every humiliation. Giancarlo Giannini and Mariangela Melato turn this clash into something raw, where class hatred curdles, slowly and dangerously, into desire.

The full Italian title runs Travolti da un insolito destino nell'azzurro mare d'agosto, and Wertmüller wasn't filming a beach romance. This is a cruel fable about power, sex and money — as funny as it is brutal — that split critics down the middle and still fuels arguments about gender and class decades later. That fight is exactly why it remains essential 1970s Italian cinema. Stream Swept Away (1974) online on iFILM.