Love and Anarchy
by Lina Wertmüller
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Elena Fiore, Eros Pagni, Giancarlo Giannini, Mariangela Melato, Pina CeiDirector: Lina Wertmüller
Cinematographer: Giuseppe Rotunno
Writer: Lina Wertmüller
Editor: Fima Noveck
Editor: Franco Fraticelli
Producer: Romano Cardarelli
DVD: Region Code 0
Audio: Italian (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Subtitled)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: Pan & Scan, 1.33:1
Running Time: 120 minutes
DVD Release Date: 1998-10-07
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Fox Lorber
Movie Reviews of Love and Anarchy
Movie Review: HAVE YOU EVER WONDERED WHAT IT MUST BE LIKE TO BE A WOMAN?
Summary: 4 Stars
I have. I often wonder about it though at my age I've resigned myself to the probability that I will never know in any significant way. I can empathize, but that knowledge is unavailable to me. I know that many men have, at one time or another, worn women's clothes and pretended to be women; sometimes seriously, sometimes not. And, I remember that when I was young, dumb and in the service I saw drag shows at he local USO; that is, frequently there were organized entertainments featuring other servicemen dressed up as women and "camping." I didn't know what that meant or why it was supposed to be entertaining because I didn't know whether or not it had anything to do with male homosexuality, with female sexuality, or what precisely it had to do with. I was still a virgin and far from home. But later, after I had my sexual indoctrination I came to realize that often when men dress up as women they're behaving like whores, which is the way many men experience femenine sexuality; that is, as by becoming the embodiment thorugh projection of their own narcissistic fantasies.. Women are whores, first, and mothers only eventually.
This movie of Lina Wertmuller's, adapted from a novel by a woman, is the story of what happens when a naif country boy leaves his town and goes to the capital. He's seen an old fiend murdered by a band of uniformed Facist thugs, doesn't understand it, but is angeed by it and decides to assassinate Mussolini, the Dictator and head of the Fascist Party. Except for a distant relative, he knows nobody in Rome, but through confusion and misrepresentation, he makes contact with this "cousin" played by Mariangela Melato who works as the celebrity prostitute in a good brothel. She accepts him into the brothel, introduces him to her fellow whores and her madame as a cousin, and allows him to stay with her. She is delighted with his mission and wants to help and encourge him. She likes him. He adds to her platinum blonde whore-house celebrity -- she is known as the house's Jean Harlow -- and has the best room with mirrors cleverly placed at angles around her bed in order that while posiing for her customers, she can show her body to advantage. Her impersonation is massively successful.
All the whores have faux or whore personalities they use to dramatize themselves before their clientele when they parade before them, evenings. One of the young whores is of the Clara Bow/Sally Bowles dizzy, fizzy flapper type and our hero Giancarlo Giannini shows some interest in her. As it happens, the Mariangela charactr's primary client is a medium-high Fascist, and one day he decides to take her and her cousin, and the cousin's flapper so-called girlfriend on an outing. They take a trip on a Moto-Guzzi motorcycle and sidecar to a farm where they are served by accommodating peasants, who allow them to fornicate at leisure in the house in the bedrooms they temporarily abandon for the purpose. This is our first close look at Fascism, and it is from the whore's point of view. Our faux Harlow hates her patron, but obeys him because she wants his business. She knows, as do all the whores, that one does not either refuse or disobey a Fascist. The party dominates all of IIaly. The peasant farmers know it and as the movie progresses, we see that everybody knows and accepts it; everybody but a minority of dissenters the Fascists call "Anarchists." What are Anarchists? Nobody seems to know, but everybody agrees they are dangerous free-thinkers.
Life in this brothel is very, very interesting; very colorful, both lewd, degrading and funny. Had LOVE AND ANARCHY been filmed by a man, I'm sure it would have been different and in certain profound ways, inauthentic, but because it was filmed by one of the 20th century's best film directors, and a woman, one is bound to take it seriously despite its vivid streaks of unexpected humor. Wertmuller knows her subject, women, men and fascism, and her country, Italy. She lived through if not all, then most of that country's 20th century hisory. The plot and characters in all their variety are vehicles of her thought. This is what she tells us; women are socially confined; imprisoned, if you like. These woman are confined not only to a profession but to a sub-caste. They are not voluntary servants because they have no choice. They must please men by participating in their sexual fantasies in order to eat. They assume phoney identities to heighten the sexual curiosity of their masters, but abandon them utterly when they are alone or among themselves. They are slaves. The dramas they create about themselves depend on their obedience skills for full effect.
Gypsy Rose Lee sang a song in the film BELLE OF THE YUCON that goes..."Every girl is different, but men are all the same." To these women all the men -- except for the country cousin -- are the same, in that they are in control. Eventually, you see, even the counry boy has become involved with the Flapper, and she does what he wants her to do. He will not do what she wants, which is to abandon his crazy idea of killing Mussolini. That would mean destroying any hope she may have of their life together. But what can she do? Nothing. None of the women can do anything because not only are their motives suspect, they do not have freedom of movement; they are in every significant respect, slaves. And, as the movie story demonstrates, their masters are indeed Fascists. They punish and kill at will, whomsoever they please. Not only is there no mercy, there is no justice. There may be humor, wine, food -- this is Italy, remembr -- there may even be Josephine Baker's voice on the phonograph singing a popular pooh-pooh-a-doo! French ditty, but there is no justice, and consequently, no peace.
Sometimes, if you want to really understand women you have to look at their men. Conversely, if you want to undesand men, you have to study their women. Is this how they see us? We men? As Fascists? Or at least potential Fascists? Certainly some do. A filthy business. Who said, "As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master?"
It is reasonable to assume that what Wertmuller is telling us is that women are slaves and men are Fascists, and the nature of Fascism itself, is best demonstrated by this simple but powerful sexual allegory. It is reasonable to think she had a point in 1973 when this film was released, and just as reasonable 35 years later to believe the pertinence of the film is heightened by the increased pressure exerted by Christofascists now, in this country, to eliminate all traces of femenine freedom in American culture: to repeal the Reproductive Rights of women; to repeal all the Affirmative Action efforts that have promoted female education and encouraged women to take promient places in business and politics; to repeal the laws that have liberalized marriage and made divorce relatively easy of access to women. American fascists are seeking to return women to the status of slaves. I suppose our Fundamentalist Christofascists would have women in red white and blue burkhas, if they could. Maybe it is only a queston of obedience, or perhaps only a questoin of time until we out-Taliban the Taliban.
Watch this movie at least once! And preferably with someone of the opposite sex.
Summary of Love and Anarchy
Lina Wertmuller and her favorite actor, Giancarlo Giannini, took large steps toward establishing their international reputations with this 1973 tragi-comedy about an oaf who gets it into his head to assassinate Mussolini right after the Fascist takeover of Italy. The hero's plans, however, get a little off-track when he falls for a prostitute in the brothel where he's hiding out. As always, Wertmuller's politics can get ahead of the rest of her film. But her sharply perceptive and comic takes on the collapse of various human constructions--social divisions, schemes, dignity--in intense situations is the stuff of genuine revelation. Giannini's renown in the 1970s as a new Chaplin, an innocent buffeted by the world's brutality and easily distracted, got a big boost from his work here. --Tom KeoghArt House & International DVD Video
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