Lina Wertmüller

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Lina Wertmüller: Portrait - Augusto De Luca

Lina Wertmüller (born August 14, 1928 in Rome ; † December 9, 2021 there ; actually Arcangela Felice Assunta Wertmüller from Elgg Español von Braueich ) was an Italian film director . For her film Seven Beauties (1975) she was the first woman ever to be nominated for an Oscar in the category of best director , and in 2019 she received the Oscar of Honor .

biography

Wertmüller's father was a Roman lawyer who came from a Swiss aristocratic family, the Werdmüller von Elgg . In 1945, against her father's wishes, she began studying at the Accademia d'arte drammatica in Rome, which she graduated with a diploma in 1951. In the same year she founded the Harlequin theater group , wrote her first plays and toured Europe. Back in Rome she worked as a journalist, actress, author, set designer and assistant director. Wertmüller joined a puppet and marionette theater. She came to film through her close friendship with Marcello Mastroianni and his wife Flora Carabella . Carabella placed her in 1963 as assistant director for Federico Fellini for the filming of eight and a half (8½) . The following year she made her first film, Die Basilisken, under her direction. The film depicts life in the impoverished south of Italy - a motif that appears again and again in her later films.

Several other films followed with modest success. Wertmüller made her breakthrough in 1972 with a series of four films starring the Italian actor Giancarlo Giannini . The last film in this series, Seven Beauties (Pasqualino Settebellezze) from 1975 (see also Seven Beauties , poem by the Persian poet Nezāmi ), was nominated for four Oscars and was internationally successful. In this grotesque a Neapolitan petty criminal tries, among other things, to survive the concentration camp by sexually making himself available to a concentration camp guard.

Lina Wertmüller (2011)

Although Wertmüller continued to have a very diverse and successful career until 2004, she was unable to build on her great successes from the 1970s. In 2019 she was honored with the honorary Oscar for her life's work.

Her first play Zwei und Zwei ist nicht Vier (German title) premiered in 1969 under the direction of Franco Zeffirelli , her second was Love and Magic in Mommy's Kitchen (first performed in 1980, Spoleto Festival , own direction). The German premiere of Love and Magic in Mommy's Kitchen took place in 1987 ( Freie Volksbühne Berlin , directed by Peter Palitzsch ), with Elisabeth Trissenaar playing the leading role .

Lina Wertmüller was married to the art designer Enrico Job (1934–2008), who provided the equipment in many of Wertmüller's films.

politics

In general, Wertmüller's films reflect heavily on her own political views. Your main characters are either communists or feminists . Often the films revolve around conflicts of political or socio-economic origin. Nonetheless, their films are rarely didactic and tend to translate their personal perceptions into images.

Carried away by an unusual fate in the azure blue sea in August , for example , tells the story of a rich industrialist's wife who only finds her erotic fulfillment through a love affair with a communist-minded sailor who behaves like a macho towards her.

Filmography

Author and director

  • 1963: The basilisks (I basilischi)
  • 1965: This time we are talking about men (Questa volta parliamo di uomini)
  • 1966: Rita la zanzara
  • 1967: My body for a game of poker (Il mio corpo per un poker)
  • 1972: Mimi, offended in his honor (Mimí metallurgico ferito nell'onore)
  • 1973: Love and anarchy (Film d'amore e d'anarchia - Ovvero “Stamattina all 10 in via dei Fiori nella nota casa di tolleranza…”)
  • 1974: Carried away by an unusual fate in the azure blue sea in August (Travolti da un insolito destino nell'azzurro mare d'agosto)
  • 1974: Operation successful - patient dead (Tutto a posto e niente in ordine)
  • 1976: Seven Beauties (Pasqualino Settebellezze)
  • 1978: On a rainy night (La fine del mondo nel nostro solito letto in una notte piena di pioggia)
  • 1978: Blood feud (Fatto di sangue fra due uomini per causa di una vedova - si sospettano moventi politici)
  • 1983: Scherzo del destino in agguato dietro l'angolo come un brigante da strada
  • 1984: My wife's friend (Sotto… sotto… strapazzato da anomala passione)
  • 1986: Camorra (Un complicato intrigo di donne, vicoli e delitti)
  • 1987: Rich and merciless (Notte d'estate con profilo greco, occhi a mandorla e odore di basilico)
  • 1989: Secretly, quietly and quietly (Il Decimo clandestino)
  • 1989: This vital anger (In una notte di chiaro di luna)
  • 1990: Saturday, Sunday and Monday (Sabato, domenica e lunedì)
  • 1992: Sperelli prevails (Io speriamo che me la cavo)
  • 1996: Lolita of the South (Ninfa plebea)
  • 1996: Shampoo, Sex and Politics (Metalmeccanico e parrucchiera in un turbine di sesso e di politica)
  • 2001: Francesca e Nunziata
  • 2004: Peperoni ripieni e pesci in faccia
  • 2008: Mannaggia alla miseria

Screenwriter (selection)

Documentary film

  • If everything is allowed in love and in war, then everything is also allowed in the cinema. A film interview with Lina Wertmüller. BR Germany, 1986, 57 min., Director: Rosemarie Stenzel-Quast, production: BR

Fonts (selection)

  • Alvise's head: to have or to be, but in order to be I have to have Alvise's head on a silver plate Limes, Wiesbaden / Munich 1986 (original title: Essere o avere ma per essere devo avere la testa di Alvise su un piatto d'argento , translated by Dagmar Türck-Wagner), ISBN 3-8090-2239-X .
  • I would have loved to have had an exhibitionist uncle. From my family album. Autobiography . Econ, Düsseldorf / Vienna 1994 (original title: Avrei voluto uno zio esibizionista , translated by Dagmar Türck-Wagner), ISBN 978-3-612-27091-7 .

literature

  • Wolfgang Jacobsen : Lina Wertmüller. Hanser, Munich, Vienna 1988, 223 p., Filmography and bibliography p. 197–223.
  • Claudia Cascone: Southern Italy staged by Lina Wertmüller. Universität der Künste Berlin , Berlin, diploma thesis, 2002, 121 pp., Ill.
  • Grace Russo Bullaro: Man in disorder. The cinema of Lina Wertmüller in the 1970s. Troubador Publishing, Leicester 2006, XXIV, 134 pp., ISBN 978-1-905886-39-5 .

Web links

Commons : Lina Wertmüller  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lina Wertmüller ( Memento from December 15, 2005 in the Internet Archive ), biography from the Renaissance Theater Berlin , 1998
  2. ↑ Lina Wertmüller, biography at MYmovies.it
personal data
SURNAME Wertmüller, Lina
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wertmüller from Elgg Spanol von Braueich, Arcangela Felice Assunta (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian film director and writer
BIRTH DATE August 14, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Rome
DATE OF DEATH December 9, 2021
PLACE OF DEATH Rome