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| Director Lina Wertmüller |
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| Wertmüller with Mariangela Melato and Giancarlo Giannini |
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| Wertmüller on the deep blue sea |
SWEPT AWAY (Travolti da un insolito destino nell'azzurro mare d'agosto) B aka: Swept Away... by an Unusual Destiny in the Blue Sea of August Italy (114 mi) 1974 d: Lina Wertmüller
I feel swept by destiny into a strange, beautiful dream. — Raffaella (Mariangela Melato)
Phenomenally popular at one moment and completely forgotten the next, Lina Wertmüller was something of a free spirit, viewed as a dynamo packed into a petite frame, with her trademark white-rimmed glasses, born in Rome, belonging to a devoutly Catholic family of Swiss descent, reportedly kicked out of 11 Catholic high schools, by her own account, thoroughly infatuated with comic books, which she described as especially influential in her youth. She developed an appreciation for the works of famed Russian playwrights, including Konstantin Stanislavski, which drew her into the world of performing arts, enrolling in a Rome drama academy (Accademia Nazionale di Arte Drammatica Silvio D'Amico), the first in Italy to teach the Stanislavski technique, winning boogie woogie dance contests in Rome before producing a number of avant-garde plays, traveling throughout Europe and working as a puppeteer, stage manager, set designer, publicist, and radio/TV scriptwriter. Thanks to her childhood friendship with Flora Carabella, who was then Marcello Mastroianni’s wife, she was introduced to Federico Fellini, becoming his protégé, working as an unaccredited assistant director on 8½ (1963), where it was her job to scout out interesting faces to place in the backgrounds of his crowded tableaux, casting her own mother and her circle of elegant socialites, appearing briefly playing canasta on a beach. The influence of Fellini’s style is evident in Wertmüller’s work, as the two share common empathy with the way they view the Italian working class, showing the realities of life for the politically neglected and economically downtrodden with a tendency towards the preposterous. Part of the Commedia all'Italiana school, and one of the first woman directors to be internationally recognized and acclaimed, Wertmüller’s films became a sensation in the United States in the 1970’s, which had no active tradition of political comedy, breaking box office records for foreign films, where at one point four of her films played simultaneously in different theaters in Times Square, while Laraine Newman impersonated her on Saturday Night Live, viewed as something new and different, with audiences initially seeing her political views as a committed leftist, but the tide eventually turned, accused of plagiarizing her male contemporaries, with critics suddenly falling silent. Her dizzying celebrity in America lasted less than five years, becoming the first woman nominated for the Best Director Oscar for SEVEN BEAUTIES (1975), representing the apex of her career, having now fallen into oblivion, though she was awarded a lifetime achievement Oscar in 2019. Initially embraced by male film critics like John Simon, Vincent Canby, and Stanley Kauffmann, who delighted in the mocking buffoonery, taking pleasure in the mix of romantic and physical comedy, as Simon revered her, describing her as “the most important film director since Bergman,” suggesting Wertmüller wasn’t a feminist but a humanist, there is now a lack of critical consensus, stirring controversy as a celebrated but divisive figure, appreciated for her innovation and complexity, but maligned for her sexual politics, described as a male chauvinist by perpetuating demeaning stereotypes typically advanced by male directors, where rape and the abuse of women are recurring themes, which is more than a little disturbing, with Anthony Kaufman writing for The Village Voice describing this film as “possibly the most outrageously misogynist film ever made by a woman.” One of the most politically outspoken postwar directors, a direct heir to the neo-realists, her anti-naturalistic and bombastic filmmaking style is “as far removed as possible from the school of Italian neorealism,” something Pauline Kael found “reactionary” in its despair over the possibility of social change. Her films were viewed as too provocative, too crass, too politically incorrect, and too outspoken, often blending gender dynamics, sex, class, and political ideologies in a volatile mix, bursting at the seams with explosive passion, refusing to be pigeonholed into genre and ideological borders, making films that were uniquely her own, declaring “It’s not so bad to be ridiculous. I’m living proof of that.” The 1970’s in Italy were defined by the Years of Lead, with far left and far right-wing acts of terrorism dominating the political landscape in a prolonged battle between Marxism and fascism, which only accentuated the political instability at the root of the film. With two classes diametrically opposed to each other, Marx predicted that the relationship between the owners and workers would forever be exploitative because the role of the owners as a class is to maximize their profits by maintaining the low wages of the workers. Therefore, modern capitalist society is defined by a class struggle between the owners and the workers over control of the society in which they live. Without taking sides in the political and gender debate, Wertmüller was daring enough to tackle sensitive issues, preferring to see opposites clash than advocating for a specific ideal. Still a household word in Italy, where, by all indications, she remains a beloved figure, as even late in her career she was a ubiquitous presence in film, television, and on stage, directing and producing works as disparate as opera, ballet, and Shakespearean plays, as well as her trademark comedies of social commentary.
While some truly important Italian filmmakers have virtually no audience in America, the criminally neglected Taviani brothers, Francesco Rosi, Elio Petri, or Ermanno Olmi, we are also unfamiliar with Gian Maria Volonté, known for his pro-Communist leanings, yet also one of the greatest and most versatile Italian actors, instead wide audiences discovered Giancarlo Giannini, Wertmüller’s sad-sack, working class hero, and the central figure of this film. Set against the backdrop of a beautiful Mediterranean sea, the blue color under the bright sun dominates the film, everpresent in its luxuriousness, Wertmüller’s work seems to exhibit a true adoration of Italy and its varied locales, beautifying her locations with a colorful cinematic extravagance that idealizes the distinctly Italian setting, shot along the eastern Sardinian coast, overrun today by superyachts and luxury tourism, a subject satirized by Ruben Östlund’s controversial Palme d’Or winning Triangle of Sadness (Sans Filtre) (2022). Wertmüller’s politically galvanized cinema managed to achieve widespread popularity through this sex farce that presents itself as an eternal battle of the sexes, but is more of a critique of class differences, fought with noisy screaming matches and comical seductions in a class warfare setting, using bedroom slapstick and political cliché’s, along with a healthy dose of prejudice against Southern Italians. Set aboard a luxury yacht in the middle of a seemingly endless sea, it features a furious display of heated arguments, pitting capitalism against socialism, the rich against the working class, and the white aristocracy against the dark-skinned ethnic worker, as the film explores the relationship of sexual dominance to political rule, using sexual violence as a means to explore political violence. Raffaella (Mariangela Melato) is a married Milanese plutocrat on a month-long summer vacation cruise with other Italian socialite couples, swimming, sunbathing, exploring hidden coves, displaying a haughty arrogance as she talks incessantly about the virtues of capitalism, throwing insult after insult to her communist brethren, railing against the hypocrisy of wealthy communists, fixated on ostentatious displays of wealth as a perfect example of cultivated bourgeois order and political power, while displaying a paternalistic attitude towards the working class. She is spoiled, demanding, self-centered, and never satisfied, as the rich lay idly by while the deckhands work endlessly to serve them, and yet, their work is never good enough, constantly deriding them as worthless examples of communism and the political left. Her nonstop political monologue infuriates Gennarino (Giancarlo Giannini), a fervent Sicilian communist who is subjected to humiliating insults, yet silently fumes as he manages to restrain his opinions to avoid losing his good job. The relentless chattiness of this section is a bit surprising, especially considering the tranquil natural beauty of the setting, as it’s nonstop, where the outspoken Raffaella personifies the smug, overly pampered rich bitch hurling abuse wherever she goes. Sleeping well into the afternoon, she misses an excursion taken by the others to go cave-diving, and insists Gennarino take her out on a dinghy late in the evening to catch up with the rest of them, but they encounter motor trouble, breaking down in the middle of nowhere, where he has to endure a constant stream of continual complaints while stranded out in the open sea, drifting endlessly with no land in sight. She insults him at every chance and works tirelessly to let him know his place. As symbols of their respective classes, Raffaella and Gennarino are in constant conflict, as she is a wealthy industrialist who despises the left, but is nonetheless a social democrat, a feminist who supports legalizing abortion, while Gennarino is a working class communist, but he’s also a macho anti-feminist, clashing figures never before seen on the American cinema landscape. At some point he’s able to restart the motor, but has no idea where they are or how far they’ve drifted, eventually spotting a deserted island, destroying the supposedly unsinkable rubber dinghy on the rocky coast, an indication that the rules of the social world they’ve left behind no longer apply here. Accustomed to having everything done for her, Raffaella begins ordering Gennarino about, but at some point he simply refuses, with the two calling each other every conceivable ideologically charged name before going their own ways in exploring the island, with his seething contempt a potent reminder of the class hatred held by the most exploited of the working class toward the ruling class.
In this back to nature saga, it turns into an idyllic fairy tale setting, like a Robinson Crusoe adventure fantasy, with two polar opposites stranded on a desert island, quickly becoming a complex analysis of gendered power relations, with a subtle exploration of white skin privilege. In a reversal of roles, Raffaella seems to have no power without her economic and social class status, something Gennarino reminds her of every instant, taking pleasure in his insurrectionist revolt, where she insultingly calls him Spartacus, a humorous reference to a Roman slave revolt, which perfectly expresses how she really feels about his role. The striking cinematography of Ennio Guarnieri adds a poetic lens, as Wertmüller likes to use facial close-ups in contrast with picturesque, sun-soaked landscape shots, featuring at least a dozen sunsets, where they simply blend into the Edenesque environment after a while, with Gennarino easily adapting to the land, where fishing is his second nature, while Raffaella is completely dependent on him to provide, forced into menial labor if she wants to eat, where her constant bickering eventually subsides, breaking down her resistance, turning into a male sexual fantasy where she soon caters to his every whim. But this does not happen overnight, as she’s forced to endure an incessant choreography of physical assaults, where he literally beats her into submission, a reminder that normally she is protected against such violence and degradation by her class position. The most controversial scene is a rape fantasy, a deplorable image of sexual violence, with Gennarino suddenly becoming lord and master of the island, establishing a patriarchal structure of dominance, emphasizing the absurd, and even grotesque elements of his character. Her strident tone is reduced to love purrs whispered under her breath, placing a garland of flowers around his genitals as he sleeps, suddenly adoring the man and his sexual prowess while living on an island paradise, where at some point they don’t even want to be rescued any more, as that would upset the equilibrium they have established, succumbing to her swell of emotions, “I feel swept by destiny into a strange, beautiful dream.” The slightly jazzy tone of the Piero Piccioni musical soundtrack only adds to the sensuality of the images, L' isola misteriosa - YouTube (2:13), reflecting romantic overtones, where particularly notable is a guitar and whistling theme, sounding like something out of a Sergio Leone movie, where there are comical touches that add levity to the outrageousness of what transpires, and at times is hysterically funny, filled with a dialect of sexism and class prejudice, but you have to put up with an exasperating onslaught on contentious verbiage. While some contend the film’s success was largely due to its element of erotic fantasy, perhaps more importantly, Wertmüller wants us to acknowledge that these class prejudices and fantasies actually exist, becoming an anarchist, updating of The Taming of the Shrew. Any possibility of an equality-based relationship is simply nonexistent, reflecting the economic structures of the times, so when the working class overthrows the ruling class, they simply replace the old guard with new faces, as the despotic practices remain the same, with Gennarino sadistically bossing her around like a tyrant, revealing how little he’s actually learned. An intersection of race, gender, and class politics, emphasizing the destructive qualities that political ideology can have on individuals, the film satirizes common conceptions of revolution and the political status quo in the process. Borrowing heavily from her background in theater, Wertmüller routinely uses the camera to emphasize the performance and exaggerated comedy of her characters, as they are perpetually in a state of emotional frenzy. Space is restricted on both the yacht and the island, trapped by the surrounding sea, creating a claustrophobia of inner tensions, confined by a repressive stranglehold from the social circumstances, where the supposed freedom on the island, unleashing pent-up emotions, is just a mirage. In a dramatic climax they are rescued, challenging their supposedly unshakable island alliance, brief and precarious, before reasserting their previously existing status quo, discovering there is no natural world apart from society. Accused of sexism and misogyny, where a woman signifies capitalism, and her rape the allegorical equivalent of a failed revolt, the film suggests an impossibility of transcending either sexual or class roles, demonstrating the working class has little chance against the power of the ruling class. While it may be read as a wicked subversion of feminism, where a woman’s situation is intimately bound up with the social world she inhabits, the real revelation may be that Raffaella, corrupted by a subjugating culture, never had any power of her own, only a perceived illusion of power, provided by the massive wealth of her husband, yet her escape from the clutches of Gennarino may be viewed as an act of female empowerment. Wertmüller has explained that gender is simply a symbol in a fable not about the war between the sexes, but about the war between the classes.
