If you weren’t around at the time, it’s hard to communicate just what a splashy, dominating place the Italian filmmaker Lina Wertmüller occupied during the 1970s.
Wertmüller, who died on Thursday at 93, was far from the first celebrated woman director — just think of Agnès Varda, Shirley Clarke, Elaine May, Lois Weber, Ida Lupino, Dorothy Arzner, or Barbara Loden.
But apart from the infamous Leni Riefenstahl, it’s fair to say that Wertmüller was the first woman filmmaker to become a household name.
She was the first to receive an Academy Award nomination for best director, the first to adorn the cover of major magazines, the first to rule and own the zeitgeist.And rule it she did.
“Swept Away,” Wertmüller’s controversial 1974 drama about a wealthy snob (Mariangela Melato) and one of her lowly yacht crew members (Giancarlo Giannini), who wind up swapping roles after the two are stranded on a desert island,
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