Prof.

Chiara Checcaglini
chiara.checcaglini2@unibo.it
 Lina Wertmüller is one of the few female directors to usually
appear in Italian film history textbooks.

Even though she has identified as feminist in the past, her

films mainly focuses on frustrated working class male
characters. From a political perspective, this contradiction
has often raised criticism.

Her films challenge the opposition between auteur and

popular cinema.
«The history of Italian cinema is primarily
about fathers and sons, and, with
occasional exceptions, women filmmakers She has been historically underestimated and
are discussed either as a marginal group misunderstood by Italian critics.
or as isolated cases».
Her career is considered to have reached its creative peak in
Bernadette Luciano, Susanna Scarparo, the 1970s.
Women in Italian Cinema
 Wertmüller’s first film, I basilischi (The Lizards/The Basilisks, 1963) fit the trends
of modernist cinema of the time. It won awards and critical praise, but it was not
a commercial success.

«My grotesque stories could not

exist without the combination of
humor and tragedy».

Lina Wertmüller

With The Seduction of Mimì, she switched to popular comedy with a grotesque take on social conflict. Her
comedies can be included in the subgenre “commedia all’italiana” (“comedy Italian style”), described by
Peter Bondanella as «tragicomedy bordering on the grotesque».

Italian critics did not understand why a visually talented director would lower herself to do a ‘trivial’ comedy.

Her films of the Seventies partake in a common sensibility towards social and political issues, expressed by
Italian cinema through stories about social conflict and political awareness aimed to mass audiences.
Mimì metallurgico ferito nell’onore, 1972 Film d’amore e d’anarchia, 1973

While Italian critics neglected and dismissed Wertmüller’s films,

American critics celebrated her lively, iconoclastic approach.

American film critics has always been less skeptical towards comedy
and commercially appealing genres in general.

❖ On the one hand Wertmüller gained the label of auteur because of

her distinctive style, recurring topics, and original perspective on
Italian society.

❖ On the other hand, she reached commercial and popular success.

Travolti da un insolito destino…, 1974

In 1977 Pasqualino Settebellezze was nominated for Best Director,
Best Actor in a Leading Role (Giancarlo Giannini), Best Writing -
Original Screenplay (Lina Wertmüller), Best Foreign Language Film
at the Academy Awards. Wertmüller was the first female director
ever to be nominated.

She signed a contract with Warner Bros. to make four films in the
U.S., but after the box-office failure of her first, A Night Full of Rain,
Warner cancelled the contract.

In 2019 Lina Wertmüller received the Honorary Academy Award.

Pasqualino Settebellezze, 1975
 Lina Wertmüller, 1972

The Seduction of Mimì is a grotesque comedy with surreal elements and

social implications. The film was presented at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival.

Themes and topics include:

• Mafia interference on politics
• Internal migration in Italy
• South vs North in working and social environments
• The difficulty to maintain political engagement
• The connection between social and sexual politics

Mimì embodies many anxieties and contradictions of the Italian

average working class man of the 1970s.
 In his essay Sergio Rigoletto focuses on the character
of Amalia to underline the hyperbolic performance of
female body as a desecrating device to criticize and
contest Mimì’s performance of masculinity.
This use of sexual farce is influenced by Fellini, even
though Wertmüller is more explicitly political in
highlighting the connections with political anxiety and
the impossibility to escape power structures.

«The Seduction of Mimì and Love and Anarchy

[…] reveal a mature and major talent, one which
shows that Fellini’s influence […] in the hands of a
«The manner in which these situations poke fun at disciplined disciple, can be made to serve large
Italian society circa 1970, especially the anachronistic and significant purpose».
machismo that continues to dog it, isn’t entirely lucid. Peter Biskind,
Mimi’s too gawky a transitional figure […] But Lina Wertmüller. The Politics of Private Life
whenever this battle plays out between Mimi’s mind
and his body, along with the bodies of several other
characters, the film’s message becomes more universal.
Giannini’s a frustrated Buster Keaton, capable of
audaciously physical derring-do, but set on holding
back in prideful prudence until he can’t contain the
primitive urge any longer».
Joseph Jon Lanthier
Slant Magazine
References

Biskind, P., “Lina Wertmüller: The Politics of Private Life”, in Film Quarterly, v. 28, no. 2, 1974, 10–16

Diaconescu-Blumenfeld, R., “Regista di Clausura: Lina Wertmüller and Her Feminism of Despair”, in
Italica, v. 76, no. 3, 1999, 389–403

Lanthier, J.J., “Review: Lina Wertmüller’s The Seduction of Mimi on Kino Lorber Blu-ray”,
Slantmagazine.com, Jun. 11, 2012

Luciano, B., Scarparo S., “Women in Italian Cinema: From the Age of Silent Cinema to the Third
Millennium”, in Burke F. (ed.), A Companion to Italian Cinema, Wiley Blackwell, 2017, 427-446

Rigoletto, S., “Laughter and the Popular in Lina Wertmüller’s The Seduction of Mimì”,
in Bayman L., Rigoletto S. (eds.), Popular Italian Cinema, Palgrave MacMillan, 2013, 117-132