“I am grateful to have received this award, which I didn’t expect, and that, for this reason, is even more welcome and makes me all the happier. For sure, the Americans always loved me,” she says to news agency Adnkronos shortly after the Academic announcement.
Lina Wertmüller, 91 on the 14th of August, will receive an Oscar to the career in 2020. This year at Cannes she got a standing ovation — and an impromptu homage by Leonardo DiCaprio — when a restored version of her 1977 Seven Beauties was presented. As an incise, the movie had gained her an Oscar nomination, the first for a woman in the history of cinema. And while in Cannes, her daughter did wish Lina could eventually win it: “It would be lovely if she could win an Oscar.”
Lina Wertmüller, 91 on the 14th of August, will receive an Oscar to the career in 2020 @ Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia di Roma
The award will be officially presented on the 27th of October, at the 11th Annual Governors Awards, with the following motivation: for extraordinarily standing out as a director throughout her career, and for her exceptional contribution to cinema. “I am very happy. I didn’t expect it — she stresses once again to Ansa — but I gladly accept it. I dedicate it to my daughter and my husband. And to the actors I consider fundamental in my career: Mariangela Melato and Giancarlo Giannini.”
Giannini, who played Pasqualino in Seven Beauties and who, along with Melato (who passed away in 2013), formed one of the most iconic cinematic duos of the second half of the past century, also shows great affection and respect for Wertmüller: “she made me. If it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t be here and I wouldn’t have done what I did in my career. She’s been everything to me.”
Wertmüller is not only a director but also an accomplished screenwriter @ Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia di Roma
Behind her iconic glasses — rigorously white — Arcangela Felice Assunta Wertmüller von Elgg Spanol von Braueich built over 40 years of Italian cinema, using a high yet popular register and a type of irony at once intellectual and colloquial, which landed her a David of Donatello (2010), a Globo d’Oro (2009) and a Flaiano (2008), Italy’s most prestigious cinema awards.
Born in Rome in 1928, from Federico, a lawyer from Palazzo San Gervasio (Potenza) and Roman Maria Santamaria-Maurizio, Wertmüller joins the Accademia Teatrale at 17. She initially works as a theatre director, then moves onto radio and TV, where she works both as a director and an author. In 1953, finally, she moves her first steps in the world of cinema, along with the great Federico Fellini: she is his assistant in La Dolce Vita (1960) and 8 and 1/2 (1962). She debuts as a director in 1963 with I Basilischi, bitter narration of the life of a group of young southerners, for which she receives the Silver Sail at the Locarno Film Festival.
Seven Beauties was a great success in the US. In an interview published last year in Variety, Wertmüller said: “It was the reaction of the media to make me understand how significant my nomination was. Since I had arrived in the US, I had been submerged by interview requests coming from both TV and newspapers. People would tell me the news talked about my nomination as a historical moment. And, when thinking about it, it truly was, especially for women all over the world. I still receive thank you letters from women directors who say were inspired by my experience today.”
Wertmüller in the 1970s @ Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia di Roma
Felice Laudadio, screenwriter, producer, critic, artistic director of Bari’s Bif&st and president of the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia (CSC) in Rome, where Wertmüller acted as special commissioner from 1988 to 1994, discusses her extraordinary career with L’Italo Americano. The CSC, along with the Cineteca Nazionale and Genoma Films, is behind the restoration of Seven Beauties, carried out on the original 35 mm films. Lina Wertmüller’s eight movie, which received one nomination to the Golden Globes and four to the Oscars, is a clever and ferocious apology to the art of make doing and surviving at all costs, typical of Neapolitan culture. Its restored version was screened for the first time on the 22nd of May at the 72nd Cannes Film Festival. Laudadio was present when DiCaprio made his praise to Wertmüller. And he tells us about it.
Giannini, who played Pasqualino in Seven Beauties and who, along with Melato (who passed away in 2013), formed one of the most iconic cinematic duos of the second half of the past century @ Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia di Roma
The Academy announced the Oscar for Wertmüller. An extraordinary career, characterized by plenty of successes and works enjoyed all over the world. In 2002, Guy Ritchie’s remake of her Swept Away (1974), with Madonna starring in the role that had been of Mariangela Melato, bore witness to her popularity in the US. What are Lina’s merits?
She contributed to change women cinema. If Monicelli is the precursor of “Commedia all’Italiana,” with his Big Deal on Madonna Street and all that came after that in the 1960s and 1970s, Lina Wertmüller is, so to speak, a female Monicelli: she radically changed the structure of comedy, introducing a female take on it, and this is a pretty important thing. Determinant, in fact, if we think about Let’s Talk about Men (a 1965 movie whose title refers to Let’s Talk about Women, directed by Ettore Scola the previous year), Love and Anarchy (1973, which participated to the 26th Cannes Film Festival, where Giannini won the award as best actor), Sabato Domenica e Lunedì (1990) and Ciao, Professore! (1992). These are all movies where female figures — all symbolically represented by Mariangela Melato, who loved Wertmüller for the way she directed her — are central. Melato and Lina had many occasions to confront each other — not to fight, to confront — while improving dialogues, lines and parts. Swept Away confirms this.
The award will be officially presented on the 27th of October, at the 11th Annual Governors Awards @ Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia di Roma
How is she relevant for Italian cinema?
Let’s take a look at the women of Italian cinema. Even today, there aren’t many, in spite of the attempt to reach a 50-50 situation, an equal representation of men and women in the field. She has definitely been an extremely powerful personality, who imposed herself as a woman director, against all forms of homologation with male cinema. And I am not talking feminism, but culture here.
What contribution did she make to the representation of Italian society, of which she revealed grotesque aspects and stratification when showing, for instance, the contrast between proletariat and bourgeoisie in the 1970s? She did offer a picture of being Italian very different from the more dramatic views of other movies of the time, such as those by Pietro Germi and Giuliano Montaldo.
Perhaps the most representative of her movies from this point of view is The Seduction of Mimi, where an extraordinary identification with the male character, interpreted by Giancarlo Giannini, takes place. Giannini, along with Melato, is an icon of Wertmüller’s work. In this movie, Wertmüller proposes a personal reading of Italy’s working class, a subject potentially difficult and that, in those years, was mostly interpreted in a leftist way by Italian critics. Indeed, they never quite took into account the contemporary aspects of her works, they always kept her in the margins, because The Seduction of Mimi is a movie against all rules. It was the same thing for I Basilischi, her first movie about young Southerners, shot between Basilicata and Apulia with amateur actors. Even Seven Beauties, extremely dramatic, but never melodramatic, works on the tragic theme of the Shoah — just like Benigni was to do, later, in Life is Beautiful — treating it with immense depth and consideration, as shown by the factual images that introduce the film.
Wertmüller was the first woman in the history of the Academy to be nominated for an Oscar as best director with Seven Beauties, and the first woman director at the Cannes Film Festival, with The Seduction of Mimi. After her, only Jane Campion in 1994, Sofia Coppola in 2004, Kathryn Bigelow — who is, for the moment, the only woman to have won an Oscar as best director in 2010 — and Greta Gerwig in 2018. The Academy stressed how this year’s awards (David Lynch, Wes Studi and Geena Davis) want to show more recognition to women and underrepresented groups. Lina’s cinematography, however, is much more than #MeToo. She cannot be considered a feminist director.
She was the first woman to be nominated as best director for Seven Beauties. The fact it had never happened before is already a sign of how much American cinema valued her directing skills, but also her screenwriting and her actors’ characterization. The movie received four nomination: best director, best male lead (Giannini), best foreign movie, best original screenplay.
But no, Lina Wertmüller is definitely not a feminist. She is a woman director, which is a very different thing. It’s the woman’s point of view that counts. Her movies have just that: a strong female point of view, that always showed through, for better or worse, through each character.
Giannini says that “Lina can make stones act well.” You are the president of the Fondazione Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome, which manages the Cineteca Nazionale and the Scuola Nazionale di Cinema, the place where “cinema is studied, learned, made.” Lina Wertmüller was a special commissioner there from 1988 to 1994. What was learned from her?
She focused on direction, screenwriting and on actor training. She represented a turning point for the School. Among her predecessors, I’d like to mention Roberto Rossellini, who was commissioner first and then director during the late 1960s. He wanted our students to be global and globalizing: they had to be actors, screenwriters, directors, editors, directors of photography: he had an extremely modern view, deriving from his great experience. Lina, on the other hand, viewed learning and training more pragmatically.
In 2019, in Cannes, Seven Beauties brought back together Lina Wertmüller and Giancarlo Giannini on the occasion of the movie’s restoration. This is, indeed, one of the most important activities of the Cineteca Nazionale. You were there. What can you tell us about this experience?
It was very moving. Aware of her “young” age, Lina wanted to be there. I was the first to call her when I got to know we could present the movie in Cannes. I called her at home, I spoke to her daughter Maria and asked if Lina would have liked to go. She asked her mother, who answered “of course I would!” straight away. And when I let the people in Cannes know Lina was coming, everyone was really interested in it. Even the Festival director, Thierry Frémaux, who usually never shows up for the screening of restored movies, came to introduce her.
On that occasion, Leonardo DiCaprio wanted to meet Lina and there is a photo showing them together: why is Lina so popular abroad?
Leonardo DiCaprio was waiting to walk the red carpet for Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, but when he heard Lina was there, he didn’t hesitate one second. He went to meet her. He knew who she was very well; this very young, yet powerful Hollywood actor was very affectionate with Lina. The meeting was immortalized in one of the last photos taken by Pietro Coccia, a great photographer of Italian cinema, who shot Giannini, Wertmüller and DiCaprio holding hands. The most touching moment of all was, however, when we were in the theatre: myself, Giannini and Frémaux were on stage, while she preferred to remain seated in the front row. When Frémaux introduced her, the public offered a long, beautiful standing ovation for Lina, who stood up and thanked. Then, there was another huge applause for Giannini. The public never forgot her and knows her merits well. Thank goodness the Los Angeles Academy does too, even though I believe it should have thought about them much earlier.
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