2) Bari – Wertmuller

12 REGISTI PER 12 CITTA’ is fast becoming like a roll call of the dead. On the day I posted Antonioni’s episode, his window, Monica Vitti, died, after a long illness. Next installment is by the recently deceased Lina Wertmuller, and deals with Bari, on the Adriatic.

Immediately we get people talking, women, having a laugh. This distinguishes the film from Antonioni’s beautiful but somewhat frigid entry. In fact, scratch the “but”, that makes it seem like Antonioni’s iciness is a flaw. What I mean is that Wertmuller’s earthy humanity here comes as a pleasing contrast.

Though she could certainly use tracks and crane to powerful effect (see TWELVE BEAUTIES, if you can bear it), she doesn’t bother with them here, which makes for still more contrast with her illustrious predecessor: instead, she has helicopter shots and handheld shots, and quick cuts, and people turning to look at the camera in clearly staged ways — DRAMA enters the movie. Although Antonioni has his own kind of drama without actors.

Folk music as score — again, making it more a film of the people, though whether the folk listen to folk music is open to question. But it’s the music of this place.

Wertmuller’s film seems less pre-structured, but sequences of fast cutting or roving camera do give it form, and the city feels like somewhere I’d love to go.

Film Directors with their Shirts Off, Again

Number five (5) in an occasional series. Lina Wertmuller with everything off.

Photo by Guido Harari.

Those aren’t swimming goggles, those are her specs. They enable her to see things in 3D.  Say what you like about the Anita Loos big plastic glasses thing, it’s definitely a look. I like it when filmmakers dress the part, like Sternberg. I guess it’s even better when they can dress the part even when undressed.

I haven’t really enjoyed any Lina Wertmuller films, I’m afraid. Maybe I will, one day. SEVEN BEAUTIES makes an interesting case study though — it kind of proves Claude Lanzmann’s point about illustrating the holocaust by reenactment. I mean, the film has many many problematic qualities, but the big reveal of Auschwitz, a spectacular set, with sweeping Felliniesque camera movements, and Wagner playing, is such a bravura show-off moment that it rapidly crosses over into the distasteful, and you feel it’s grotesque for any filmmaker to exploit this stuff as an opportunity to display their filmmaking chops. Which opens a big old can of worms — what IS the appropriate artistic response to the holocaust? If this is obscene, which war films are OK? Very few, seems to be the answer.