Lina Wertmüller (1928-2021)

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MichaelB
Joined: Fri Aug 11, 2006 6:20 pm
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Lina Wertmüller (1928-2021)

#1 Post by MichaelB » Thu Dec 09, 2021 9:21 am


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domino harvey
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Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:42 pm

Re: Passages

#2 Post by domino harvey » Thu Dec 09, 2021 2:17 pm

I still think it’s shocking that in the recent gold rush to lift up female directors, one of the first major female directors to achieve “wide,” Bergman-level art house circuit recognition had been mostly left behind, or at least not foregrounded as you might expect

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knives
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2008 6:49 pm

Re: Passages

#3 Post by knives » Thu Dec 09, 2021 3:10 pm

I was about to say the same thing especially since her films are genuinely great, but I guess she’s not as marketable to promote as the director of The Bigamist.

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dwk
Joined: Sat Jun 12, 2010 6:10 pm

Re: Passages

#4 Post by dwk » Thu Dec 09, 2021 3:32 pm

I wonder how much of that has to do with the Kino havng the US rights to a big chunk of her films. A massive downside to them releasing so much is that their releases have no lasting impact. Like a physical media equivalent of streaming's drop every episode at once model.

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hearthesilence
Joined: Fri Mar 04, 2005 4:22 am
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Re: Passages

#5 Post by hearthesilence » Thu Dec 09, 2021 3:37 pm

There's a 2005 NY Times column by Dave Kehr that mentions this (and another Chicago Reader article from the 1990s), but despite the vocal support of John Simon and Roger Ebert, recognition for her work went into a steep downward slide from what seems like the '80s to the present. Surprising as she was quite prolific up until 1999, but it looks like she made only one film in the 21st century (back in 2004). Also, she has been collecting quite a few lifetime achievement-type awards over the past decade, including an honorary Oscar...but somehow that hasn't translated into a resurgence with the public (retrospectives, hearing her pop up in the general discourse, etc.)

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ianthemovie
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Re: Passages

#6 Post by ianthemovie » Thu Dec 09, 2021 3:50 pm

I can't say I'm all that surprised by the lack of interest in Wertmuller's films in the recent revival of interest in female filmmakers. The gender politics of something like Swept Away are arguably even more provocative and eyebrow raising today than I imagine they were in the 70s. I can also see many younger American viewers trying to make her work square with current trends in feminism and absolutely losing their minds, or at the very least dismissing it as having "aged poorly" (which is a shame, because her irreverent humor about gender and sexuality is exactly what makes the films great!)

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senseabove
Joined: Wed Dec 02, 2015 3:07 am

Re: Passages

#7 Post by senseabove » Thu Dec 09, 2021 4:00 pm

The only thing approaching a retro that I've seen was the Italian Cultural Institute of San Francisco choosing her for their annual pick-an-Italian-movie-personality weekend marathon festival. Most other festival subjects have been acknowledged international titans like Antonioni, Magnani, Mastroianni, de Sica, Bertolucci, so it says something that she was included among that group, but...yeah, that was pretty well the first and last time I'd heard any discussion of her, and there wasn't much to that beyond "this is a thing that is happening." It didn't seem to spark any particular fever among any of the local cinephiles I know.

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jwd5275
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Re: Passages

#8 Post by jwd5275 » Thu Dec 09, 2021 5:40 pm

dwk wrote:
Thu Dec 09, 2021 3:32 pm
I wonder how much of that has to do with the Kino havng the US rights to a big chunk of her films. A massive downside to them releasing so much is that their releases have no lasting impact. Like a physical media equivalent of streaming's drop every episode at once model.
Criterion would in the least have access to A Night Full of Rain from Warners, though having never seen it, I couldn't judge how worthy a use of resources a rescue would be...

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knives
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2008 6:49 pm

Re: Passages

#9 Post by knives » Thu Dec 09, 2021 6:31 pm

ianthemovie wrote:
Thu Dec 09, 2021 3:50 pm
I can't say I'm all that surprised by the lack of interest in Wertmuller's films in the recent revival of interest in female filmmakers. The gender politics of something like Swept Away are arguably even more provocative and eyebrow raising today than I imagine they were in the 70s. I can also see many younger American viewers trying to make her work square with current trends in feminism and absolutely losing their minds, or at the very least dismissing it as having "aged poorly" (which is a shame, because her irreverent humor about gender and sexuality is exactly what makes the films great!)
That’s my thinking as well. While her logline seems an easy sell the way she is feminist and the way she is socialist are all at a severe remove from the narrow definition that is popular nowadays not to mention how as you said she has a sense of humour.

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Fred Holywell
Joined: Thu Jun 10, 2010 11:45 pm

Re: Lina Wertmüller (1928-2021)

#10 Post by Fred Holywell » Thu Dec 09, 2021 10:56 pm


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Matt
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 12:58 pm

Re: Lina Wertmüller (1928-2021)

#11 Post by Matt » Thu Dec 09, 2021 11:15 pm

senseabove wrote:The only thing approaching a retro that I've seen was the Italian Cultural Institute of San Francisco choosing her for their annual pick-an-Italian-movie-personality weekend marathon festival.
I believe Turner Classic Movies aired a mini-retrospective of her work (maybe just the films that are with Kino) sometime in the last couple of years. I remember thinking, “Ah, this is finally my chance to catch up on her work,” and I watched half an hour of Seven Beauties, didn’t connect with it, and that was that.

To me, she’s always seemed like one of those filmmakers who was fashionable in the ‘70s among the arthouse crowd, but who had somewhere along the line lost their cinephile cachet by the time the DVD era rolled around and, unlike Varda or Demy or Tati, just never really got a surge of revived interest (see also Claude Sautet, Bertrand Blier, Alain Tanner, et al).

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Aunt Peg
Joined: Fri Dec 21, 2012 5:30 am

Re: Lina Wertmüller (1928-2021)

#12 Post by Aunt Peg » Fri Dec 10, 2021 5:13 am

We had a mini retrospective in Sydney of some Lina Wertmüller's work during the year. Her better known films were screened as well as a few lesser seen films. I was thriller that The Lizards (The Basiliks) was screening but then MUBI showed it so I didn't bother going to the screening. But I did get to see Ciao, Professore! (1992) which I'd never even heard of and it was an absolute delight from start to finish. Turns out it did get a DVD release back in 2004 that passed me by. We also had the pleasure of an introduction (pre-filmed before the film) by Wertmüller.

I've watched a few of her 1970 classics in recent years and all of them have held up very well. Anyway, for my money she is better than most filmmakers working today. Period.

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hearthesilence
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Re: Lina Wertmüller (1928-2021)

#13 Post by hearthesilence » Fri Dec 10, 2021 12:44 pm

I don't know if this helps explain why there hasn't been a resurgence, but her work apparently was and continues to be very polarizing. Going through archival reviews of her work, she's had plenty of detractors (her entry in The New Biographical Dictionary of Film is especially brutal). I also noticed that many of those same detractors from back in the day seem to champion contemporary films by Akerman, Varda, etc. quite a bit. It probably doesn't help that Simon, perhaps Wertmüller's biggest supporter, apparently made some dubious arguments diminishing other Italian filmmakers in an attempt to boost his view that Lina Wertmüller was the greatest of them all.

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Fred Holywell
Joined: Thu Jun 10, 2010 11:45 pm

Re: Lina Wertmüller (1928-2021)

#14 Post by Fred Holywell » Sun Dec 12, 2021 6:32 pm

The Criterion Channel is currently hosting the seven Wertmüller titles that Kino Lorber rereleased, plus the 2015 doc Behind the White Glasses.

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