One of the most controversial figures to emerge in the cinema of the 1970's was Lina Wertmuller (1928-2021) (who got her start the preceding decade helping out Federico Fellini ) a director who mounted a policy of disputatious populist cinema that would address the major issues of the past and of the present. A foreground of sexuality and politics in the most brazen and entertaining manner possible. Wertmuller was acclaimed in America but to this day remains somewhat of a cult figure. On the surface, her ideologies leaned towards the left - she is a self-professed Socialist, something we would learn from her interviews - and her treatment of sex was decidedly progressive, with subjugating, self-aware women that called all the shots in the war of the sexes.
Wertmuller's various films include 1972's The Seduction of Mimi, Love and Anarchy (1973) and the subsequent films that garnered her the most notoriety, her masterwork Swept Away (1975) and 1976's Seven Beauties The reaction against her films from the Left and from feminists the like was most vociferous in the states, where they were breaking box-office records for Italian films. Depending on viewpoint, Lina's ideas could be perceived as either too broad or to confined int socio-political labels or so haphazardly thought-out as to be class bound and ironically misogynistic.
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| Lina still believes in anarchy...from Love & Anarchy with Mariangela Melato, her derriere and a bemused Giancarlo Giannini |
Wertmuller's last work came in the year 2004, a commedia dell'arte style film that starred a seasoned Sophia Loren, Too Much Romance...It's Time For Stuffed Peppers.