Born on the 14th of August 1926 in Rome, into an aristocratic family. Arcangela Felice Assunta Wertmüller von Elgg Spanol von Braueich was a screenwriter and filmmaker of Swiss origin.
After being in a troupe of puppeteers and actress, she founded, at age 24, an avant-garde theatrical troupe, making her debut as a director.

Her film career began in 1963 under the impulse of her meeting with Federico Fellini. She worked as an assistant director on Fellini’s 1963 masterpiece 8 ½. A springboard that allowed her to realize her first film “The Basilisks”. A slow-paced portrait of life in a southern Italian town, and which was scored by Ennio Morricone.
After “The Basilisks” she directed a series of films, including the spaghetti western “The Belle Star Story”. Film which she co-directed with Piero Cristofani, under the joint name Nathan Wich.
As a committed and feminist filmmaker, through her comedies she wanted to liberate the film from social constraints of a society driven by good conscience. Lina’s more directly political films principally featured the great actor Giancarlo Giannini . The 70s marked the Wertmüller’s golden age: “The Seduction of Mimi” (1972), ” Love and Anarchy” (1973), “and Swept Away” (1974). Film afterwards remade by Madonna and Guy Ritchie – about a rich woman stuck on a desert island with a member of her boat crew.

“Seven Beauties”, which again features Giannini in the lead role, pushes Wertmüller’s specific brand of tragic comedy to its limits. Giannini is an Italian mobster who ends up in a Nazi concentration camp. Subsequently the movie won a clutch of Oscar nominations. Wertmüller was nominated for best director, best original screenplay and best foreign language film, and Giannini for best actor.

As Giancarlo Giannini said during an interview “Lina was a volcano. She knew everything, knew dance, acting, the camera, lighting, writing, editing. She had been Fellini’s assistant director; her imagination was boundless and she opened my mind”

Lina Wertmuller was the first woman to be nominated for the best director Oscar and was awarded an honorary Oscar in 2019. She died aged 93 but her legacy will never end as a testament of inestimable value for the new generations.

Discover Lina Wertmuller’s clips on www.visititalywithmovies.com and her incredible films at www.movieitalyplus.com

Click here to read more articles!