Lina Wertmüller

Italian director Lina Wertmüller, who died in 2021 at the age of 93, became the first woman ever nominated for an Oscar for Best Director for 1975’s film "Seven Beauties" (Pasqualino Settebellezze). But that film didn’t just fall from the sky. Between her early work and that high point, she made three films in the early 1970s that allowed her to pull into focus her ideas about power, desire, class, politics and conflict: "The Seduction of Mimi" (1972), "Love and Anarchy" (1973) and "Swept Away" (1974).

Power, Desire and Politics

The Seduction of Mimi (1972), Love and Anarchy (1973) and Swept Away (1974) aree not only linked thematically but also star a recurring pair of actors: Giancarlo Giannini and Mariangela Melato.They play radically different characters each time: a Sicilian worker confronting the Mafia and bourgeois morality; an anarchist prostitute in Fascist Rome; or a Communist sailor and the wealthy woman he despises, stranded together on a Mediterranean island.

Wertmüller repeatedly turned political conflict into intimate combat. Her mixture of political satire, eroticism, grotesque comedy and violence made her films both hugely popular and controversial on their original release. Seen today, their audacity remains striking, but so do their uncomfortable gender politics. What once passed as provocative social comedy now raises questions about misogyny and the fantasies of domination the films depict. Rather than resolving these contradictions, Wertmüller’s cinema exposes them – ensuring this trio is still as provocative and volatile as it was in the 1970s.

Cinema is the most popular art, so it is very important to dedicate my films to the masses. If the masses don’t hurry up and understand the world’s problems, then we will all end and probably badly.

Lina Wertmüller