Lina Wertmüller

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How Left Is Lina?

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That Wertmuller is a thoroughly professional show-woman with an astonishing knack for the comic as well as the grotesque can hardly be denied. But is all the commotion about politically conscious cinema really justified?

Consider Love and Anarchy. Despite the quotation from Enrico Malatesta, a 19th Century anarchist, the film has no politically revolutionary moral…. The film may be sensitive to the interaction between the personal and the political, but the individualistic description it gives is thoroughly unrepresentative of the development of political consciousness among Italy's peasant and working classes, recognized as one of the most advanced in Western Europe. The film's focus on a politically naive individual carries the implication that the people are unaware and unprepared; it becomes a warning against the assumed irresponsibility of the masses, hardly a revolutionary attitude.

Swept Away takes the notion of irresponsibility a step further. From the opening moment when the Milanese industrialists are swimming and sunbathing, chattering about politics, taking jabs at the Right as well as the Left, the film works up to the idea that 'politics' boils down to talk, jibberish, confused babble…. Ostensibly, it's an allegory about the oppression of the masses by the ruling class; Gennarino is able to overwhelm Raffaela when he gets direct control of the means of production. But how is this newly-found power put to use? He rapes Raffaela and kicks her around the island. Raffaela, on her part, becomes a willing slave. Each reveals an inner personality completely in contradiction with the politics they outwardly profess. The implication is clear—politics is jive, deception, with each side trying to call the other's bluff…. Swept Away's treatment of the class contradictions in capitalist society is politically ambiguous, for although the fable runs along with the classic jargon about proletarians and bosses, oppressors and the oppressed, its twists and switches are such that one really isn't sure where the film-maker herself stands in the end.

The story of Mimi—a Southern worker who goes North, becomes radicalized in the factory but eventually gives up his Communist ideals under Mafia pressure—is far from the perceptive social commentary that most American critics have claimed it to be. Related only superficially to the tradition of Italian neo-realism—the post-war movement typified aesthetically and in terms of content by its social commitment and focus on the lower classes—The Seduction of Mimi is much closer to the series of long-titled "commedie brillanti" characterized by the familiar stereotyped image of the "terrone" (derogatory term for Southerner). All the basic ingredients are there—a ridiculously narrow-minded, hypocritical macho male is ultimately done in by his own shortcomings. (pp. 15-16)

In spite of its proletarian anti-hero, the film's political implications are clearly conservative. Mimi's path is a closed circle; it denies the possibility that the South can escape the oppressive, provincial mentality imposed by centuries of economic underdevelopment, the Church, the Mafia and Christian Democrats. Such pessimism is extremely anti-working class in view of the fact that it doesn't correspond to the actual political situation—Mimi in his ignorance is far from reflecting the Southern proletarians who have emigrated to the big industrial centers and have begun to collaborate with Northern workers….

Much has been made of Seven Beauties, defined as a universal portrayal of the beast within us all, but again the stereotype of the ridiculous Southerner—a ruthless Neapolitan this time—imposes its limitations in terms of popular cinema "dedicated to the masses." The film tells us that you've got few choices if you're a small time gangster with a pack of ugly sisters to provide for, and that the insane asylum and concentration camp are horrific extensions of life on Naples' streets. The point is amply made, however, that Pasqualino ends up in one hell-hole after another essentially because of the personal choices he makes. At question is the issue of the individual's moral responsibility in the brutal face of history; but to play on the stereotype of the Neapolitan—a sly, crafty creature, dangerously anti-social, puffed up with self-importance and hung up on self-respect—in order to wring a symbol of the baseness of the human species out of him, seems at best to be in poor taste if you consider the fact that in Italy the problem of racial-like prejudice against the South is still far from resolved….

Wertmuller's work may appear politically outrageous, ultra-committed or exceptionally sincere in America where political themes are rarely directly confronted on film; seen in her native context, she's just one among many talking, writing and filming about 'the exploited masses.' (p. 16)

Why have Americans been so swept away? The glitter of a well-wrapped package can draw attention from what's actually inside. American moviegoers are not accustomed to political situations—American, Italian or otherwise—being openly discussed on the screen. An interest in aesthetics fills in the void. Wertmuller's style is sophisticated and flashy, it dazzles; the color and composition of her images overwhelm, the pace leads you along at breakneck speed. Side-tracked by the force of such cinematic know-how, viewers might see Mimi's Sicilian machismo and cop-out on his co-workers, the class/sex war between Gennarino and Raffaela, and Pasqualino's apolitical lust for survival as bold and masterful synthesis of the political and the personal. A closer look, however, reveals the politics of these films to be shrewd manipulation of popular, 'in' notions about how cinema could or should be socially concerned, politically committed; Wertmuller makes an anti-hero out of a proletarian underdog and still manages to arrive at politically conservative conclusions. (p. 17)

Lucy Quacinella, "How Left Is Lina?" in Cinéaste (copyright © 1976 by Gary Crowdus), Vol. VII, No. 3, 1976, pp. 15-17.

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