Swept Away, 1974

The basic story of a rich woman who is "tamed" by a coarse man sounds unappealingly politically incorrect, and isn't there always "The Taming of The Shrew" anyway? Yet this movie is a marvelously successful comedy, and it succeeds slyly where a more self-important outlook would sink the risky premise. Director Lina Wertmuller has managed the whole thing with great wit and intelligence: for example, somehow as shocking as the instances of physical violence are (he slaps her a bit), the woman never seems like a mere beaten victim. In this respect the clever and sublty comic and tough performance of Mariangela Melato is brilliantly vulnerable. Otherwise she would be a combination of merely obnoxious and then pitiable -- which she is not. The choice to keep this in the realm of fantasy, a sort of very hip allegory about identity and wealth and sex, was a very shrewd one. Come to this with an open mind, and let yourself be titillated by Wertmuller's honest, bawdy wit, which is never crude, and this very unusual story will stay with you -- not as the ultimate explanation of class conflict (although that is important) or the battle of the sexes, but the mystery that is human relationships. Beautifully photographed, and with nicely underplayed music which underscores the touch of pathos also present. One of a kind. 8.08_______PS I still think it is one of a kind, but it may have been partly inspired by the 1956 Russian movie "The Forty-First" which deals with a young Soviet Bolshevik and an old-Russian-family young aristocrat, female and male respectively, who are castaway together during the Russian revolution and civil war of 1917-1919, and forge new somewhat romantic understandings, at least temporarily. 6.09

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