Lina Wertmüller

Arcangela Felice Assunta "Lina" Wertmüller (Italian: [ˈliːna vertˈmyller] ; 14 August 1928 – 9 December 2021) was an Italian film director and screenwriter. She is best known for her 1970s art house films Seven Beauties, The Seduction of Mimi, Love and Anarchy, and Swept Away.

Wertmüller was the first female director to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director. She won many awards, including an Academy Honorary Award, as well as a David di Donatello Career Achievement Award, and was nominated for many others, including a Golden Globe Award, two Academy Awards, and two Palme d'Or awards.

Early life

Wertmüller was born Arcangela Felice Assunta Wertmüller in Rome, Lazio, in 1928, to Federico, a lawyer from Palazzo San Gervasio, Basilicata, belonging to a devoutly Catholic family of distant Swiss descent, and to Maria Santamaria-Maurizio from Rome. Wertmüller depicted her childhood as a period of adventure, during which she was expelled from 15 different Catholic high schools. During this time, she was infatuated with comic books, and described them as especially influential on her in her youth, particularly Alex Raymond's character Flash Gordon. Wertmüller characterized the framing of Raymond's comics as "rather cinematic, more cinematic than most films", an early indication of her inclination toward film. Wertmüller's desire to work in the film and theater industries took hold at a young age, as early on in life she developed an appreciation for the works of the Russian playwrights Pietro Sharoff, Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, and Konstantin Stanislavsky, drawing her into the world of performing arts.