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Swept Away… by an Unusual Destiny in the Blue Sea of August (Lina Wertmüller) 1974
* * 06-04-02 Jeremy Heilman
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Lina Wertmüller has already ensured her place in film
history by virtue of being the first female director to be nominated for an
Academy Award (for 1976’s exercise in misanthropic manipulation Seven
Beauties), but the politics of her movies consistently leave me cold. Swept
Away…, which is considered a light trifle by Wertmüller’s standards,
still manages to be fairly offensive. It tells a simple yarn about a man and a
woman who are opposite in every way that are shipwrecked on a desert island, but
attempts to turn their specific story into an allegory about Big Issues. Though
the film is admittedly quite funny in spots, it’s at once too simple and too
convoluted to truly take off. Instead of simply being a battle of the sexes, the
movie introduces economic, social, racial, and political standings into the mix.
While this allows the movie to be more topical than it might be if the
characters were prototypically labeled as “man” and “woman”, it also
creates biases that are hard to overcome. Certainly, Swept Away… is more sympathetic toward the man (Giancarlo Giannini)
than the woman (Mariangela Melato), who is presented as a shrill, overbearing
bitch. When the inevitable role reversal occurs, the movie never chastises him
for his eagerness to dominate. I suppose the movie seemed radical when it was
released in the 70’s since it was directed by a woman (imagine the waves of
revulsion that would have greeted this film had a man directed it!), but
wasn’t afraid to bash them, but from a modern perspective it looks self-hating
and obvious.
There’s something to be said, I suppose, for Swept
Away…’s relative unpredictability, but I imagine that has more to do
with its bad taste than its inventiveness. The movie’s plot doesn’t confound
our expectations, really, but its crassness does. We’re thrust in the middle
of a no-holds-barred screaming match for much of the film’s running time, and
when it finally develops beyond that, it turns into something even more
insidious. If I try to ignore this film’s wacky sexual politics, I’m able to
enjoy it a bit more, though, even if sometimes it’s not funny since you can
hear the gears spinning beneath the bile. Certainly, it’s an attractive film
whenever it’s not shooting its cast in close-ups that makes their heads look
overly bulbous. The island landscapes look appropriately desolate; though you
almost wish they were completely empty, thanks to the irritating inhabitants
that Wertmüller created. Though I haven’t seen it, Ivan Reitman’s Six
Days Seven Nights was a Hollywood remake of this material. I would be
interested to see to what degree Swept
Away…’s woman beating and sexual humiliation was retained in a PG-13
remake. Also, Guy Ritchie is reportedly remaking the film again, this time as Love,
Sex, Drugs, & Money, with Madonna in the Melato role (inspired casting,
to be sure).