At the age of 93, the director Lina Wertmüller has left us. She was the first woman to receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Directing: that was 1976 and the film was Seven Beauties with an extraordinary Giancarlo Giannini.
Long-awaited recognition from the Academy for her career came many years later. The motivation for her Lifetime Achievement award in 2020 was significant: “for her brave, provocative dismantling of political and social rules using her preferred weapon: the film camera”. On that note, how to ignore the immediate reference to two of her most famous works, Swept Away (1974) and The Seduction of Mimi (1972), which also created the couple in art: Giannini-Melato?
From her debut in 1963 with The Basilisks, the director often represented a voice for the dispossessed and depicted reality in all its defects, while also giving full life to the places where her stories were set. From her birthplace, Palazzo San Gervasio, in the territory of Potenza, she then moved to nearby Apulia - “blessed with everything” - then Sicily and Sardinia, Turin, Rome and Naples among others. These are places that have provided the big screen with unforgettable stories and images, chosen because they were raw, authentic, lived in by real people, where still today, if you look carefully, it seems that you can see Sofia Loren, Giancarlo Giannini, Marcello Mastroianni, Mariangela Melato and all those actors whose intensity made their characters immortal. And, always, Lina’s face, determined, ironic, framed by her iconic white glasses, behind the film camera.
Read the itinerary about the locations of Lina Wertmüller’s films.