Lina Wertmüller

Director

August 14, 1928 (93 years)

† December 9, 2021

Rome, Italy

Biography

Lina Wertmüller (14 August 1926 - 9 December 2021) was an Italian film writer and director of aristocratic Swiss descent. In 1976, she became the first woman ever to be nominated for an Academy Award for Directing with the film Seven Beauties. Description above from the Wikipedia article Lina Wertmüller, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Filmography

8.3

Gian Burrasca's Diary

A miniseries based upon the eponymous children's classic by Vamba. A mischievous young boy gleefully causes chaos and confusion to his immediate family and acquaintances.

7.4

Swept Away

A spoiled rich woman and a brutish Communist deckhand get swept up in an especially hot Italian summer.

7.5

Seven Beauties

Pasqualino Frafuso, known in Naples as "Pasqualino Seven Beauties" is a petty thief who lives off of the profits of his seven sisters while claiming to protect their honor at any cost, Pasqualino is arrested for murder and later sent to fight in the army after committing sexual assault. The Germans capture him and he gets sent to a concentration camp where he plots to make his escape by seducing a German officer.

5.3

A Night Full of Rain

Lizzy, a liberated American photographer, falls for narrow-minded journalist Paolo. Then finds she can't live with him or without him.

7.7

Love and Anarchy

Set in Fascist Italy before the outbreak of World War II, the story centers on Tunin, a farmer turned anarchist who stays in a brothel while preparing to kill Benito Mussolini.

7.1

The Seduction of Mimi

Voting against the Mafia in what he thinks is a secret ballot costs Sicilian laborer Mimi his livelihood. He leaves his wife, flees to Turin and romances a Communist organizer – but he just can’t shake the Mafia. When they lure Mimi back to Sicily with a better job, he must keep his lover – and love child – under wraps. That’s when his wife announces she’s pregnant.

7.2

Ciao, Professore!

A bureaucratic snafu sends Marco Tullio Sperelli, a portly, middle-aged northern Italian, to teach third grade in a poor town outside Naples

6.7

On a Moonlit Night

An American journalist works for a French newspaper. He is writing an article about the reaction against people with AIDS, without knowing he is infected too. Once he finds out, he decides to cut off himself leaving his wife and daughter.

5.8

Rita the Mosquito

Rita, a vivacious co-ed is in love with her music teacher, a man who leads a double life - bespectacled professor by day and composer of rock songs by night. Will Rita win his heart?

6.3

The Belle Starr Story

Dominated by men in her youth, Belle Starr now out-shoots and out-gambles them as she makes her way around the West. One man who's her equal is Larry Blackie with whom she has an on-again, off-again relationship. Together they become involved in a robbery which goes awry....

7.4

Saturday, Sunday and Monday

Rosa, a mature mother of several children, is concerned that her beloved husband Don Peppino is losing interest in her, and does his best to provoke some jealousy in him. She is a masterful cook, and if her romantic charms are fading, her culinary skills are not. By one means and another, and after some amusing confrontations, she succeeds in keeping her husband from taking her for granted and harmony is restored.

6.5

All Screwed Up

A group of workers from the south of Italy live collectively in Milan, where money isn't everything, it's the only thing, in 1974.

6.6

Blood Feud

In pre-World War II Sicily, just as the fascists come to power, two men fall in love with the same woman. The changes in their country's politics ultimately take all three on a journey across the ocean to New York City.

5.3

The Nymph

Set during the second world war, the sentimental education of a sensual adolescent girl, growing out of her childhood in a small, impoverished village in Southern Italy.

3.9

Sotto Sotto

Ester finds herself sexually attracted to her newly divorced friend Adele. When Ester admits another love to her hot-headed husband, he searches manically for the rival, who he never suspects is a woman.

7.6

The Basilisks

The uneventful lives of three young men who live in a small, poverty-stricken village in southern Italy.

6.4

Ferdinando and Carolina

On his death bed in the 1820s, King Ferdinando I of Naples tries to escape the ghosts of his bloody kingship by remembering his younger days, when he was allowed to go hunting and have fun, and inventing love games. Then he was obliged to marry Mary Caroline of Austria, daughter of Empress Mary Theresa, in a political marriage: unexpectedly, they became happy lovers, until court power games divided them, and a different historical season arrived.

5.1

The Worker and the Hairdresser in a Whirlwind of Sex and Politics

During the general elections of 1994, Tunin, a mechanic with a firm belief in communism fears that his party is about to lose, so he journeys to a northern village to stir up trouble. He isn't there long before he is arguing with a beautiful hairdresser. Their debate is fiery as is his growing and impossible-to-disguise passion for her. She too is intrigued with him, but their disparate ideologies threaten to keep them apart.

6.0

Camorra (A Story of Streets, Women and Crime)

After Annunziata (Angela Molina) opens up a hostel with her friend Antonio (Daniel Ezralow), she is saved from being raped by a Camorra boss as the gangster is suddenly killed. The killer escapes before Annunziata is able to see who it was. Following this murder are several others, and always with the same “signature” — a syringe in one of the testicles of the victims. As the gangsters continue to be killed off, the identity of the killer – or killers – slowly becomes obvious.

5.4

Summer Night with Greek Profile, Almond Eyes and Scent of Basil

A charming billionaire manager kidnaps a criminal and locks him up in her private villa in Sardinia.