THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, October 24, 1994 TAG: 9410220054
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Interview
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES LENGTH: Long : 108 lines
AS A MOVIE LEGEND, Lina Wertmuller is still a force to be reckoned with - a tough and significant force.
``A legend?'' she mused. ``But, you see, I am still working. How can I be a legend? That is someone of the past.''
In the 1970s, the Italian filmmaker broke onto the international scene in a way no woman director has since. Her films were provocative, sexy and always political. They still prompt major arguments. For ``Swept Away by an Unusual Destiny in the Blue Sea of August'' (1974), she became the first woman nominated for an Oscar for directing, a record she held until Jane Campion was nominated last year for ``The Piano.''
Now, she's back on American screens with the comedy ``Ciao, Professore!'' It's about an urban schoolteacher who is sent to the slums of southern Italy to teach third-graders from hell. For Wertmuller, it is uncharacteristically likable and sweet. The film opens tonight at Norfolk's Naro Expanded Cinema.
Does this mean the rebellious Wertmuller, now 66, has become more optimistic about life?
``No,'' she answered, peering from behind her trademark white-framed glasses. ``It just means that I want to get the picture released in the United States. You have very lazy audiences here. They want something nice.
``As for me, I remain a terrified optimist. And don't be fooled. This film is political, too. All my films are political. Everything in our lives is political, even though we don't want to admit it. You can't escape from your government. You may try to ignore it, but government controls what we do and how we live.''
Wertmuller was in Los Angeles after a long flight from Italy to open the movie. Hers is one of those few mystic names in film; no one ever expects to actually meet her. But here she is - complete with huge silver earrings that shake every time she emphasizes a point.
American feminists have pointed out, perhaps correctly, that there is something weird about a film industry in which only two women have ever been nominated for the top directing award.
Wertmuller said it was not unusually difficult for her to become a director.
``I was full of energy,'' she explained. ``I was very extroverted and very passionate. Sure, there were problems, but my passion overcame them.''
She is the daughter of a Roman lawyer of aristocratic Swiss ancestry. Her parents wanted her to be a lawyer. Wertmuller was thrown out of a dozen Catholic schools before beginning her working life as a schoolteacher.
``Fellini took me in because I amused him,'' she said. She was an assistant to Federico Fellini on his classic autobiographical movie ``8 1/2.''
``Fellini was not treated well toward the end,'' she said. ``He couldn't raise money to get his films made. So, you see, it is no different for men than women. The film industry is very sick, and it is a sickness brought upon itself. In Rome, you can see 50 movies a day on television. So how can the new generation see film as something special? There are no laws protecting the distribution of films.''
Wertmuller became familiar to American audiences with ``The Seduction of Mimi,'' the 1972 comedy about a macho Sicilian who sacrifices his happiness for his code of masculinity. It made fun of machoism in a way no other filmmaker had done.
With ``Swept Away . . . '' she opened a new phase of the sexual wars. It had a domineering rich woman shipwrecked on a deserted island with a working-class sailor. They find their social, and sexual, positions reversed when she has to depend on him. The film got Oscar nominations for Wertmuller and her leading man, wide-eyed Giancarlo Giannini, who, through her films, becme a sex symbol. Her breakup with him was rumored to have been a loud one.
Today, she simply says, ``I seldom see Giannini. I hear he is still working.'' Period. End of discussion.
With ``Seven Beauties'' in 1976, she opened a scandalously original film. It had Giannini as a small-town casanova who gets his comeuppance when he's put in a German concentration camp where the fat, sloppy female warden forces him to ``perform'' - or else.
Some say Wertmuller's films prove she hates men; others say she hates women.
``I like some of each,'' she said, through an interpreter.
Her new film required her to direct a horde of child actors. It wasn't easy, she said. ``But I have experience, since I was thrown out of many schools for misbehaving. I would gather them together and say: `Kids, what are we trying to say here? What is this scene all about?''
She liked working with child actors because ``the first urge of children is to play, to put on a show. They have an honesty that they lose when they become adults.''
Wertmuller believes Americans will take to the film ``because your public school system, I am told, is in as much trouble as the one in this movie. Some of the children in the movie are selling drugs, even though they are in the third grade. Here, we have a teacher who tries to turn them around.
``The trouble in our society is seduction. We are being seduced, on all sides, by advertising that urges us to HAVE. To have refrigerators. To have cars. Everything. People think they must have these things, and they will do anything to get them - starting as little children.''
As she left, the thin, wiry director added, ``Tell everyone that I am still working. If you don't get to see my films, then it is too bad for you.''
Too bad, indeed. MEMO: ``Ciao, Professore!'' plays tonight and Tuesday at the Naro Expanded
Cinema, 1507 Colley Ave., Norfolk. 625-6276. Mal's rating: ``Ciao,
Professore!'' plays tonight and Tuesday at the Naro Expanded Cinema,
1507 Colley Ave., Norfolk. 625-6276. Mal's rating: ***
ILLUSTRATION: MIRAMAX FILMS
Italian filmmaker Lina Wertmuller's latest film, "Ciao Professorel,"
will be at the Naro in Norfolk tonight and Tuesday.
by CNB