Lina Wertmüller’s Working Class Visions
Having grown up in an Italian-American family, there are a few films which I consider hallmarks. They are Goodfellas,Godfather, Moonstruck, My Cousin Vinny and Rocky. While all of these movies exhibit a differing array of attributes on the spectrum of well-known italian characteristics, they are still very much American movies. It was not until college that I experienced my first native Italian film. Unlike most introductory global cinema courses, the professor didn’t show a Fellini or Bertolucci film, but rather we were shown Swept Away by Lina Wertmüller. Her 1974 film, 47 years after its release, is still very much controversial. The plot follows Mariangela Melato’s character Raffaela, a wealthy woman who is shipwrecked on a desert island with the only surviving crew member Gennario, a communist played by Giancarlo Giannini. The controversial scene in which Raffaela is raped on the beach by Gennario, is not only hard to watch, but sums up the work of Lina Wertmüller. Her works are engineered to be provocative in order to make audience members think about their own sexual desires, hypocrisies, and most importantly, their politics and class.
As a self identified socialist, Wertmüller has focused much of her filmography on working class people (Armitstead 2019). In an interview with Nora Sayer of the New York Times, Wertmüller said, “Man is fighting desperately to retain his own privileges: Because he does not know who is going to wash his socks or make his omelet or massage his back. Even the working woman doesn’t know who is going to wash her children’s socks. Of course her earnings are helpful. But both sexes prey on the anxiety: about what is going to happen.” And those anxieties act as a guide to her body of work.
In the late 1970s, during Wertmüller’s peak production period, the overall unemployment rate was at 30% in Sicily (Bertola and Garibaldi 2003, 23). A struggle common to many of Wertmüller’s protagonists, unemployment has historically been a larger issue in Southern Italy than in the Northern provinces. Even today, the unemployment rate in Sicily is 20% compared to Milan at 9.9% (European Union 2020). This brings us to All Screwed Up,the 1976 comedy focused on two Sicilian men, Gino and Carletto who migrated north to Milan looking for work. While working several low wage jobs to make ends meet, Gino (Luigi Diberti) and Carletto (Nino Bergamini) befriend a group of women with whom they later share an apartment. They did so thinking that they would save money living with six people, only to find the opposite true. Gino and Carletto find themselves working in a meat packing plant in the morning and a restaurant at night, only earning enough to cover the bare minimum of necessities. At the same time, flatmate Isotta (Isa Danieli) began prositutioning to pay her bills because she does not make enough as a maid and no employer in the North is willing to hire a “southern hick”. Isotta’s plotline is certainly reflective of contemporary times as Sicilian women still have the highest unemployment rate out of the entire EU at 30% (Ghiglione and Romei 2019). Italy’s Southern Minister Barbara Lezzi told the Financial Times, she blames the current crisis, especially pre-pandemic on “years of ineffective and absent policy for the south”. Minister Lezzi goes on to say that long term investments in the local economy and infrastructure are key to solving this crisis (Ghiglione and Romei 2019). The film was released in Italy at a time when workers were finally able to have a say in their work. The Charter of Workers Rights, created in 1970 and reformed in 1974, made it possible for the employees to have fair compensation and safety standards. Moreover, this legislation got rid of regional based pay in favor of an industry standard, so regardless of whether one works at a factory in Portofino or Calabria they are compensated at the same rate (Bertola and Garibaldi 2003, 10). Even this legislation, while well intended, could not stop the growing globalization and neoliberalism which was forthcoming over the next decade (Bertola and Garibaldi 2003, 9). Moreover, medium size businesses were relocating to Northern Italy from the south because of its highly educated workforce and closeness to mainland Europe (Bertola and Garibaldi 2003, 10).
The Cosa Nostra, better known as the Mafia, has been a part of Sicilian life since 1580 when it was viewed by many as an alternative governing structure to the feudal rule of King Phillip II of Spain (Time Magazine 1931). While Sicily has certainly evolved since the 1500s, the mob is still very much a presence and acts as an alternative employer. In The Seduction of Mimi, Wertmüller’s 1972 film follows a Sicilian dockworker Mimi (Giancarlo Giannini) who, after voting against his employer’s backed candidate in an election, loses his job and migrates to Turin to look for new opportunities. Once in Turin, he falls in love with Fiore (Mariangela Melato), a communist party organizer, but after they are married for a few years their politics change. This ideological change occurs when the powerful Tricarico family in Sicily gives Mimi a promotion as a foreman at the same factory from which he was previously fired. This echoes contemporary times as Sicilian organized crime is using the COVID-19 crisis to give jobs to unemployed workers and financial relief to businesses, while expecting to be paid back in the future (D’ Ignoti 2020). Wertmüller uses this film to show that the relationship between the private sector, government and organized crime in Sicily is not that different. All three groups give opportunity and exploit the common man, which Giancarlo Giannini’s Mimi represents. One can sense Wertmüller’s closeness to this film, as her family roots date back to the Basilicata region of Italy, and it’s not a far stretch to think that she has had family members in similar situations as Mimi (Armitstead 2019). Furthermore, this Cannes Film Festival hit came to Hollywood as a remake by Universal Pictures as Which Way Is Up? starring Richard Pryor and released in 1977.
In 1977, Lina Wertmüller became the first woman to be nominated for Best Director by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for her Holocaust drama, The Seven Beauties. But it was not until 2019 that she received an Honorary Oscar which was presented to her by Sophia Loren at the Academy’s Governors Awards. Wertmüller and Loren worked together on the 1978 film, Blood Feud, which charts the rise of Mussolini through the lens of folks in a small rural village in Sicily. Loren plays Titina, a widow whose husband is killed by the mafia and she begins to seek revenge on the killer. On a parallel track, frequent Wertmüller collaborator Giancarlo Giannini plays her late husband’s American cousin who comes to town only to shake up Titina’s life. Simultaneously, a wealthy Roman lawyer Spallone ( Marcello Mastroianni) is in town to visit his mother when he falls in love with Titina. The love triangle between our three main characters is reminiscent of The Philadelphia Story in that it further accentuates the different class backgrounds of our characters. For instance, Spallone’s early life resembles Wertmüller’s own upbringing in a wealthy Swiss-German family (EuroNews 2019). Moreover, the Roman born director uses this character to satirize “limousine liberalism”. For instance, Spallone donates to several good causes such as stopping child labor in sulfur mines, but does nothing to actually stop child labor from happening. On the flip side, she shows the growing power of fascism in this working class community through the escapades of Nick. He gets in trouble with the head of the local fascist party, who happens to also be the man who killed Titina’s husband. At the same time, Titina being extremely apolitical only cares about how she will get food on the table until the threat of Mussolini becomes real.
Musolini’s actual ascendency and appeal to working class Italians was due to the fact that he grew up the son of a blacksmith in a Northern Italian farming village (Iodice 2018, 3). His populist economic rhetoric that Italy was being taken advantage of by immigrants and the Roman elite in Post-World War One played extremely well with industrial workers and farmers alike (Iodice 2018, 7). In addition, Mussolini appealed to business and landowners because of his belief that organized labor should be stopped (Lasansky 2004, 1). This political point of view, coupled with Mussolini’s machismo and his brash style, attracted multitudes of new voters (Monti 2011, 13). This made it possible in October 1922 for Mussolini to take control of the prime ministership after the fascist party marched on Rome. By 1926, Musolini consolidated the powers of the Kingdom of Italy and made himself a dictator (Monti 2011, 13).
Wertmüller has dabbled in alternative histories with Love and Anarchy (1973) where her main character tries to assassinate Mussolini. This is similar to Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, but the assassination attempt is on Adolf Hitler. While alternative histories fascinate filmgoers and readers alike, they also speak to an obsession of Wertmüllers’. She seems to have a never-ending urge to figure out why her parent’s generation allowed Mussolini to rise to power.
At 92, Lina Wertmüller has used her voice and visual medium to speak for working class Italians. Her cinema ,while provocative, has never turned its lens away from the economic issues facing her country. Wertmüller’s socialist politics impact how she sees “the worker” and the larger socio-political context around one’s line of work. Whether it’s The Seduction of Mimi or All Screwed Up, she has been able to show how regional economies, the mob, private sector industry, and government all impact the individual worker in an often violent and sometimes humorous way. As the definition of work is being redefined in a post-COVID world, one should look towards Lina Wertmüller works as a guide to our global past and the possibilities for the future.
Seven of Lina Wertmüller’s films are available for purchase through Kino Lorber .
Blood Feud is currently streaming on TUBI and available for purchase by Scorpion Releasing.
Bibliography
Armitstead, Claire. 2019. “Ninety and out to shock: meet the first ever Oscar nominated female director.” The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/mar/07/lina-wertmuller-90-oscar-italian-director-fascism-crime-sexual-violence.
Bertola, Giuseppe, and Pietro Garibaldi. 2003. “The Structure and History of Italian Unemployment.” CESIFO WORKING PAPER, no. 97 (April), 37.
D’ Ignoti, Stefania. 2020. “Mafia, Poverty, and the Pandemic.” Foreign Policy Magazine, May 4, 2020. https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/05/04/coronavirus-pandemic-southern-italy-mafia-poverty/
EuroNews, dir. 2019. “‘It’s not about sex, it’s about power’: Lina Wertmüller on being a woman in a man’s world.” Aired October, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bh6JKzK3XB4.
European Union. 2020. “Sicily.” International Market, Industry , Entrepreneurship. https://ec.europa.eu/growth/tools-databases/regional-innovation-monitor/base-profile/sicily.
Ghiglione, Davide, and Valentina Romei. 2019. “Sicily’s Young People Struggle to Find Jobs and Training.” Financial Times, July 10, 2019. https://www.ft.com/content/7fb1a0e6-9f0d-11e9-9c06-a4640c9feebb.
Iodice, Emilio. 2018. “Lessons from History: The Startling Rise to Power of Benito Mussolini.” The Journal of Values-Based Leadership 11, no. 2 (July): 32. https://scholar.valpo.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1241&context=jvbl.
Lasansky, D. Medina. 2004. The Renaissance Perfected: Architecture, Spectacle, and Tourism in Fascist Italy. N.p.: Penn State University Press.
Monti, Jennifer L. 2011. “The Contrasting Image of Italian Women Under Fascism in the 1930’s.” Syracuse University Honors Program Capstone Projects 1, no. 1 (May): 103. https://surface.syr.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1706&context=honors_capstone.
Sayer, Nora. 1975. “Lina Wertmüller Defines ‘Free-Wheeling’ Politics.” New York Times, February 5, 1975, 1. https://www.nytimes.com/1975/02/05/archives/lina-wertmuller-defines-freewheeling-politics.html.
Time Magazine. 1931. “Italy: 1500 Years.” Time Magazine, July 6, 1931. http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,741951,00.html.
Wertmüller, Lina, dir. 1972. The Seduction of Mimi [Mimì metallurgico ferito nell’onore]. Italy: Euro International Film.
Wertmüller, Lina, dir. 1973. Love and Anarchy [Film d’amore e d’anarchia, ovvero: stamattina alle 10, in via dei Fiori, nella nota casa di tolleranza]. Italy: Peppercorn-Wormser.
Wertmüller, Lina, dir. 1974. All Screwed Up [Tutto a posto e niente in ordine]. Italy: Euro International Film.
Wertmüller, Lina, dir. 1974. Swept Away [Travolti da un insolito destino nell’azzurro mare d’agosto]. Italy: Medusa Distribuzione.
Wertmüller, Lina, dir. 1975. Seven Beauties [Pasqualino Settebellezze]. Italy: Medusa Distribuzione.
Wertmüller, Lina, dir. 1978. Blood Feud [Fatto di sangue fra due uomini per causa di una vedova, si sospettano moventi politici]. Italy: Lord Grade, Harry Colombo Production, ITC Entertainment, Liberty Film.
