Swept Away (Travolti da un insolito destino nell'azzurro mare d'agosto)

 

Director Lina Wertmüller

Wertmüller with Mariangela Melato and Giancarlo Giannini

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.

2020 Top Ten List #1 Martin Eden

Director Pietro Marcello

Actor Luca Marinelli (left) with the director

MARTIN EDEN                    A                                                                                                     Italy  France  Germany  (129 mi)  2019  d:  Pietro Marcello

My desire to write is the most vital thing in me.                                                                              —Martin Eden (Luca Marinelli)

A curiously intriguing yet shattering portrait of an artist as a young man, told with blistering honesty, a model for American writers to come, co-written by the director and Maurizio Braucci, adapting to Italy and Europe an American work by Jack London, an avid socialist, written at the age of 33 after he already achieved international acclaim for his earlier novels The Call of the Wild, The Sea-Wolf, and White Fang.  Despite the acclaim, London quickly became disillusioned with his popular fame and set sail through the South Pacific on a grueling two-year voyage, struggling with weariness and fatigue generated by gastrointestinal diseases, where he wrote Martin Eden, published in 1909, listed at #61 among Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century, filled with open frustrations, adolescent fisticuffs, and struggles for artistic recognition.  Teeming with the bombastic elements of Fellini and Bellocchio, this coming-of-age saga recounts the turn of the century historical period of Italy, shot on Super 16mm by Alessandro Abate and Francesco Di Giacomo, resembling earlier works like Bellocchio’s VINCERE (2010), a portrait of Mussolini as a young man who transitioned from a socialist agitator to a ruthless fascist dictator, or Bertolucci’s early works like Before the Revolution (Prima della rivoluzione) (1964) and The Conformist (Il Conformista) (1970), epic historical works, character studies that are also meditations on Italian political history that express the turbulence of the times and are among the best films ever made.  Starring Luca Marinelli as Martin Eden, a semi-autobiographical character who is in nearly every shot of the film, he was awarded Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival, but it’s the poignant artistic flourishes that capture the viewer’s imagination, among the few films seen all year that aspire to greatness.  Eden is a carefree sailor coming from an impoverished working class background with no attachments, no beliefs, and no values, leading a purposeless existence, finding himself alone, yet vested with a strong sense of adventure.  A random event changes his life, as he rescues a man at the docks from being harangued and bullied, saving him from some dire fate.  In appreciation, the grateful man introduces Martin to his family, a well-to-do and respectable bourgeois family where he meets his sister, the elegantly refined Jessica Cressy as Elena Orsini, a university student who captures his heart straightaway by playing a wondrous piano recital of Debussy, playing Passepied from his Suite Bergamasque, Debussy: Suite Bergamasque - IV. Passepied (Gieseking ... YouTube (3:42).  Martin immediately becomes receptive to everything associated with her, impassioned with the idea of learning, filled with a flood of visual associations, where she represents a new compelling sensation, like a divine goddess or a spirit of creation, literally breathing in her goodness, possessed by a beauty emanating from her soul, trying to capture her in words, offering a poem, signaling a desire to become a writer, asserting his own self-improvement through books, literally devouring whatever he can find, embarking on a career as a writer, hoping to sell stories to magazines, even turning to her for educational advice, having dropped out of primary school to hit the road and travel, losing what he now values the most, becoming obsessed with learning and broadening his educational background, bettering himself with the inflamed desire to capture her love, continually writing to her during their absence.  From her family’s position, he’s a bit crude and even a little barbaric, never learning bourgeois manner and etiquette, viewed a bit like a bull in a china shop, where his impoverished roots are too raw and coarse for her delicate disposition.  Nonetheless, she’s drawn to him and gives him a chance, but after reading Nietzsche, denying man’s free will, or the social Darwinism of Herbert Spencer who coined the phrase “survival of the fittest,” he spars with the local socialist radicals in free speech forums, arguing against it, conveying individualism as the essential core ingredient, which they angrily associate with their fascist bosses and the ruling class.  Martin transforms his identity, growing as an artist, finding himself increasingly distanced from his working-class background and surroundings, yet is never welcomed into a world of wealth and refinement, which would be essential if he wished to marry Elena, as she’s simply out of his league, becoming a bit of a blowhard out of frustration, overstaying his welcome in her family, railing against her own wealthy parents and their liberal respectability, which only drives her further away.  Her loss is like a hole in his gut, simply irreplaceable, having to build a new life and start anew. 

Martin strives to elevate himself from his destitute circumstances, hoping to achieve a place in the literary establishment, but instead only accumulates a steady stream of rejection letters, renting a room from a widowed seamstress Maria (Carmen Pommella) and her children on the outskirts of town, who takes him in like her own son and encourages him, but grows increasingly angry and suspicious when he’s unable to pay, wondering if he’s taking life seriously.  Early on, before having met Elena, Martin had a one-night fling with Margherita (Denise Sardisco), who he meets again in Elena’s company working as a waitress, ignoring her, paying her no mind, but he runs after her again after being shunned by the Orsini family, becoming the new love of his life.  But Martin exhibits chauvinist manners, never treating women with equal respect, believing contemptuously they are somehow beneath him, as if women are a lower standing than men, which is how women were perceived a century ago, and Martin, more of a roughneck, was not ahead of his times when it comes to gallantry or appreciation.  Instead he develops an unlikely friendship with an older man, Russ Brissenden (Carlo Cecchi), a cynical loner who is a committed socialist, also a sickly writer suffering from tuberculosis who encourages him to give up writing and return to the sea before he gets swallowed up by the corrupt stench of city life, introducing him to some real socialist firebrands that he calls the “real dirt,” as they’re willing to get their hands dirty in pursuit of a more equitable political solution, yet Eden ardently rejects the socialists, or even joining a union, which to him means giving up one boss for another, calling them part of a slave class that has always existed in history, identifying instead with hard corps individualism, but only for himself, like some kind of frontier freedom, never speaking for a human collective or a surrounding impoverished class that needs to liberate itself from tyranny.  Brissenden becomes his holy mentor, an incomparable artist, a man alone in the Cosmos, a madman scoffing at the world, showing absolute contempt for his audience, cut off from all superficial connections and values, writing Ephemera, which Martin calls a poem of the century, just before he shoots himself (foreshadowing Martin’s own fate).  This kind of Socratic dialogue plays out like a Greek theater commenting on Italian history, which was undergoing massive transformations, mirroring his own metamorphosis as an unrecognized yet free-spirited writer.  When one of his stories finally gets published, the monetary reward is stunning, finally able to contribute something back to the hands that have been feeding him.  An indictment of pandering art and a brilliant essay calling for a more challenging and thoughtful expression of filmmaking, Marcello’s film is intensely creative and vividly experimental, using astounding visual imagery, where the cleverness is setting an additional underlying layer happening simultaneously as the story is being told, filled with dreamlike effects which may or may not be capturing his imagination at the time, but sets a tone for what may be a poem of the mind, much like the works of Terrence Malick.  Revealing a subterranean stream-of-conscious layer that’s given such a prominent place in the overall artistic design of the film, filled with realistic faces of working place figures, hardened by time and lifelong effort, or grainy, color-tinted archival footage, yet also juxtaposed by the innocence of dancing children, who may represent Martin and his sister at a young age, which is another expression of pure love that also changes over time, as well as the presence of ships at sea, which in a particularly dire moment slowly sinks.  This impressionistic revelation of his interior thoughts, given a swooning backdrop of history, may be the most astounding aspect of the film, visually the most stunning and surprising, with remarkable editing, where early on what sounds like French popular songs play out over some of these sequences, exuding the energy of the French New Wave, which can be jarring, feeling sentimentalized and distorted, but also represents daring choices, as youth is filled with a kaleidoscope of shifting influences, not all of which stick with you or hold the same meaning, but they were all part of your life, where the meaning that matters the most changes over time. 

The film jumps ahead in years, with Martin now a popular and commercial success, where people who were suspicious of him initially have now come to accept him, where his views are part of the mainstream, even beloved internationally, with his working-class depictions of communal struggle endearing him to Communist countries like Russia and China, yet Martin has also changed substantially, exuding traits of unending despair and fatalism that are a walking contradiction, no longer the rebel rouser of his youth, yet he commands attention in public forums, where he is treated like a celebrity.  But he doesn’t seem to be enjoying his success, or care to be a generational influence, remaining distrustful of anyone close to him, believing it’s not him but his fame they value, basically ordering Margherita around as if she’s his own personal slave, treating Elena with utter contempt when she comes around to pay a visit, where he seems angry at the world, as if there is no safe space.  While the world has moved on and embraced him, he remains ambivalent, offering a bleakly honest assessment of himself, still seeing himself as an outsider railing against the cowardice of bourgeois society, donating much of his money to the socialist causes simply because they remain irritants to the status quo, wanting wholesale changes to the world around them, as poverty continues growing unabated, with wealthy classes ignoring them with a sustained indifference, which is where Martin now finds himself, older, less ambitious, more resigned to his sad fate.  Wealthy and successful, but unhappy in love, he cherishes his memories when he was committed to searching for freedom, seeking a primary truth, when he was a young firebrand knocking on the door of success, persistent in following his dreams.  But where has it gotten him?  Embittered by his own view of individualism, which failed to provide the desired promise, as the person in the story is not a hero, still holding a grudge against all those who didn’t accept him early on, including the publishers, the same bourgeois interests that now embrace him, even Elena, holding them at the center of his unbridled contempt.  The hubris of his own ego, his own hypocrisy, looms large, as he’s become a hollow caricature of himself, no longer real, but a figment in people’s imagination who see in him what they want, not who he really is.  This elusive idea of individualism seems unattainable, yet it’s been the driving force of his life, transforming a remarkable success story into a chronicle of human failure, unable to stop the rising tide of fascism, which is all but inevitable in the annals of history.  Few even understand or care anymore, as they don’t really take him seriously.  As for himself, he seems to be following the disgruntled path of his old friend Russ Brissenden, forever wanting something better, giving more than lip service to it, including large sums of money, but he’s like a prisoner of his own beliefs, unable to bring about social change or live in an unjust world, resigned to a certain fate that he’s no longer a fighting force.  He has offers and designs of traveling to America, writing about the New World, which just might shake up his complacency, becoming his latest project, or is it just a vanity project?  These kinds of thoughts are swirling around in his head, never the success he dreamed of, as he hates being a public figure, loathing and hating himself for becoming part of what he in fact detests and resents.  A forlorn figure besieged by doubts, like CITIZEN KANE (1941), the sum total of his life stands before him, where it’s so easy to condemn what he’s become.  Defying God and nature in the same breath, he can only in the end rail against himself and his own failed practices, as he couldn’t attain the success he wanted, on his own terms, in his own mind, which was to be a free man.  Bought and sold to the highest bidder, his value determined by commerce, in his mind he’s a total disgrace, a complete fraud, and a moral hypocrite.  With one last individualist gesture, a desperate attempt to assert a mangled and perverted inclination of free will, the New World will have to wait, as instead he flings himself into the sea with a bitter sense of nihilist futility, followed by a somber and impassioned musical transcendence, Ottorino Respighi: Tre Corali di Johann Sebastian Bach (P. 167) YouTube (11:57).  In many ways London’s life mirrors Jack Kerouac, a poet who took his talents on the road seeking the elusive road to freedom, living his youth to the fullest, never stopping for a moment to breathe, always on the move, yet once he becomes a successful celebrity writer, his response is to drown himself in liquor and self-loathing.  Even the name Eden conjures up imagery of a Paradise Lost.  Exuding the raging existentialist ramblings of Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground, London described his novel as a searing critique of the failures of individualism, and a parable of a man who had to die, “Not because of his lack of faith in God, but because of his lack of faith in men.”