31st
Swept Away … by an Unusual Destiny in the Blue Sea of August (1974)
Swept Away… does not strike me as so misogynistic and lady hating as some seem to believe it. After all, it’s the woman of the film who finds herself able to adapt, change, and grow in response to a shifting environment, while the man remains prideful, unhappy, and alone, even while embraced in the arms of his hard won female prize. If anything, the film seems down on the hairier sex, accusing us all of being hard headed sad sacks, woefully condemned to isolation for our inability to believe in the world as strongly as we believe in ourselves. I would encourage you, however, to watch the film and decide for yourself. It’s a celebration of the medium, a sort of high holy holiday for any regular worshipers at the church of cinema. Setting her picture on a deserted island populated by one man and one woman, director Lina Wertmüller composes shots as thoughtful and as intelligent as anything found in Antonioni. But, because she has a sense of pace, the cutting never falls into the “thinking man’s morass” that plagues so many other so-called high art films. The sex isn’t tasteful, so keep your parents away, but it is primal and exciting; Wertmüller gets many miles from just suggesting how far she’s willing to go - a torn dress and a few off camera slaps convince us that she’s serious. Giancarlo Giannini grumbles his way through the picture, doing a passable imitation of a sentient shower drain hairball, and Mariangela Melato is dazzling in her transition from rage-aholic society gal to insatiable capital “W” Woman.
(I haven’t seen the Guy Ritchie remake, but I can imagine that were Madonna placed in an accurate reproduction of Wertmüller’s original, it would have nuked her career beyond recognition; the saving grace of making a tame, timid box-office failure is that you are only accused of having bad judgement, not bad feminist morals).
