Swept Away By un Unusual Destiny in the Blue Sea of August

A boat lost in the middle of the sea, carrying a talkative aristocratic feminist from the north and a backward communist sailor from the south—this is fate’s cruel joke. Yet it is also an unexpected opportunity to understand something about the complicated world we live in. In the male-dominated Italian film industry of the 1960s and 1970s, Lina Wertmüller—alongside Liliana Cavani—was among the first female directors to carve out a place for herself through audacity and persistence. In Swept Away by an Unusual Destiny…, she performs a merciless vivisection of society and human nature, staging a conflict between gender, class, politics, and imagination. The divergence manifests itself in every tiny detail. Premiering a few years after the introduction of divorce in Italy and at the height of feminist movements, the film still strikes like a whip. During filming, actors Mariangela Melato and Giancarlo Giannini—true stage forces—were pushed to physical extremes. As Melato later recalled: “There were slaps, kicks, shoves, real dislocations; it was completely realistic. We had bruises and contusions even after returning to Rome”. So how are we to grow up? By loving one another? Wertmüller seems to remind us of a cruel truth: for every complex problem, there is always a simple solution—and it is always wrong.

Stanisław Bardadin

Lina Wertmüller (1928–2021) – Italian director and screenwriter, one of the most uncompromising figures of post-war Italian cinema. In her films, she fused sharp social commentary with the energy of comedy, transforming its conventions into instruments of satire and political critique. Wertmüller’s work primarily exposed class and cultural inequalities. She was the first woman to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director (Seven Beauties, 1977), a milestone that brought her international recognition and secured her place in cinema history.

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