Abstract
Lina Wertmüller’s now classic 1970s films might seem the quintessential incarnation of feminist Claire Johnston’s call for a women’s political countercinema operating within the codes of the traditionally patriarchal entertainment film.1 The Italian filmmaker has in fact repeatedly proclaimed her lifelong love affair with popular cinema. “My greatest desire is to make popular cinema,” Wertmüller states in a 1976 interview with Paul McIsaac and Gina Blumenfeld,2 while a year later, in a conversation with Gideon Bachmann, she specifies, “I have made a decision for popular work because I have chosen a form that should reach as far as possible.”3 Simultaneously, her films of the time—Love and Anarchy, Swept Away, and Seven Beauties in particular—deal with issues dear to feminism, such as women’s social roles, and rights and gender power relations.
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Filmography
I basilischi (1963)
Il giornalino di Gian Burrasca (1965) (TV)
Questa volta parliamo di uomini (1965)
Rita la zanzara (1966)
Non stuzzicate la zanzara (1967)
Il mio corpo per un poker (1968)
Mimì metallurgico ferito nell’onore (1972)
Film d’amore e d’anarchia, ovvero stamattina alle 10 in via dei Fiori nella nota casa di tolleranza… (1973)
Tutto aposto e niente in ordine (1974)
Travolti da un insolito destino nell’azzurro mare d’agosto (1974)
Pasqualino Settebellezze (1976)
La fine del mondo nel nostro solito letto in una nottepiena dipioggia (1978)
Fatto di sangue tra due uomini politici per causa di una vedova — si sospettano moventipolitici (1978)
Una domenica sera di novembre (1981) (TV)
Scherzo del destino in agguato dietro Vangolo come un brigante di strada (1983)
Sotto … sotto … strapazzato da anomala passione (1984)
Un complicato intrigo di donne, vicoli e delitti (1985)
Notte d’estate con profilegreco, occhi a mandorla e odore di basilico (1986)
Imago urbis (1987)
12 registiper 12 città (1989)
Il decimo clandestino (1989) (TV)
In una notte di chiaro di luna (1989)
Sabato, domenica e lunedì (1990)
Io speriamo che me la cavo (1992)
Vivaldi (1992)
L’anima russa (1993)
Ninfa plebea (1996)
Metalmeccanico e parrucchiera in un turbine di sesso e politica (1996)
Ferdinando e Carolina (1999)
Francesca e Nunziata (2001) (TV)
Peperoni ripieni e pesci in faccia (2004)
Mannaggia alla miseria (2010) (TV)
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© 2013 Maristella Cantini
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Consolati, C. (2013). Grotesque Bodies, Fragmented Selves. In: Cantini, M. (eds) Italian Women Filmmakers and the Gendered Screen. Italian and Italian American Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137336514_3
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