(14 August 1928 - 9 December 2021)
The Italian writer and director Lina Wertmüller, who has died at the age of 93, could never have been a mainstream artist, as she was always out off the edge, batting on the boundaries of artistic life and achievement. She abhorred the making of films just for the money it might accrue, so she launched herself on her own road to posterity without compromising her abilities. Perhaps her main claim to fame was that she was the first woman director to be nominated for an Academy Award (Seven Beauties in 1975). She didn't win but it was an achievement nonetheless. She was born Arcangela Felice Assunta Wertmuller von Elgg Spanol von Braueich in Rome in 1928. Perhaps her own long name gave rise to her often lengthy film titles. Unruly as a child - she was expelled from fifteen Catholic schools - she nevertheless enjoyed her life reading trashy comics with Flash Gordon being, she claims, an influence on her work. After university she wrote several plays, travelled as a puppeteer and general theatre dogsbody and was then a writer for radio and television. In the 1960s she met actor Marcello Mastroianni who introduced her to Fellini who influenced her future work in that she was always concerned for the working class and this gave her work a political conscience. She made several films including The Basilisks, and in 1966 cast Giancarlo Giannini, an actor she often used, in Rita the Mosquito. It was during the 1970s that her most important films emerged including The Seduction of Mimi and a further six Italian comedies. She eventually became known outside of Italy in 1975 with Swept Away... by an Unusual Destiny in the Blue Sea of August, her first international success, winning an award from the National Board of Review. Seven Beauties also featured Giannini as an Italian man sent to a concentration camp but the comedy moved on to tragedy in the account of prison life. Having secured a contract with Warner Bros, her first film, A Night Full of Rain, was a flop and the contract was cancelled. She made Blood Feud with Sophia Loren and Mastroianni and directed a film of Eduardo De Filippo's play Saturday, Sunday and Monday, also with Loren, and also wrote for other directors including Zeffirelli's Brother Sun, Sister Moon. Further examples of her lengthy film titles include A Joke of Destiny, Lying in Wait Around the Corner Like a Bandit (1983), Summer Night with Greek Profile, Almond Eyes and Scent of Basil, The Blue Collar Worker and the Hairdresser in a Whirl of Sex and Politics, and Too Much Romance... It's Time for Stuffed Peppers. Lina Wertmüller was married to art designer Enrico Job who died in 2008, and they have a daughter, actress Maria Zulima Job. Lena was the winner of many international film awards and she finally received an Honorary Academy Award in 2019.
MICHAEL DARVELL
