With all the talk (mostly negative) about Guy Ritchie’s and Madonna’s vanity project, the remake of Swept Away, I just had to use this as an excuse to rent the original 1975 Italian film, directed by Lina Wertmuller. As usual, the original film is much better in viewing, than the new project is in just hearing about what goes on in it. The practice in Hollywood seems to be, take a foreign film, and dumb it down a bit (or a lot). Sometimes this is understandable (I doubt that if Hollywood remade Wings of Desire verbatim, people would’ve flock to it -- it was remade as City of Angels, a much more romance-oriented picture), but in the case of Swept Away, it was revealed that the politics, and most of the harsher portions of the storyline, were expunged, which essentially removes the entire point and purpose of the storyline.

I had other reasons for wanting to watch Swept Away a few days ago. You see, I’ve already seen this before, a number of years ago...... and it was not an easy film to watch the first time. In fact, it is safe to say that anyone walking into this film cold, and even those who already know a bit about it, will not find Swept Away an easy film to watch. It is surely one of the more shocking films of the seventies, especially if viewed from our era.

The story is about a rich woman (Mariangela Melato) who, with her husband and friends, is sailing on a yacht in the Mediterranean. The woman never misses an opportunity to badmouth the deck hand (Giancarlo Giannini), for literally everything, from his cooking to his background to his left-wing, Communist politics. The woman doesn’t just badmouth the deck hand, but states her opinion on many other issues of the day, mostly just to provoke one of her buddies, a Communist sympathizer. (The opening scene is a scream, as the sympathizer tries vainly to shout down her arguments, and you fear that all his veins from the neck up will soon explode)

One day, the woman decides she wants to go for a swim, and so gets the deck hand to take her out on the powerboat further into the sea. Suddenly, the boat breaks down. He is unable to fix it, and the yacht is too far out for them to call out for rescue. The two float around for the entire evening and into the next day. He is able to fix the boat, but they are lost, and so aimlessly cruise until they find land. Sounds great... but it turns out that this is a tiny, deserted island.

The two have to fend for themselves, but it soon becomes clear that the man is the only one who knows what to do. After all, he’s used to having to live with his wits and his hands, while the woman is spoiled. Therefore, the man uses this situation to his advantage, and turns the tables, with him as the powerful, and her as the oppressed.

This basic description may make the movie sound like a political satire, which it is, but it probably doesn’t give you an indication of the go-for-broke attitude that Wertmuller took with this movie. Wertmuller spares absolutely nothing in depicting this conflict, and, despite how you may take the material, gives us no simple answers, which only makes the film much more troubling to watch. We’ve established that the woman is spoiled and ignorant, and also a raging capitalist (right-wing), and that the deck hand is a poor lower-class worker with Communist sympathies (left-wing). What we also discover is that, since this movie was made in the early 70’s, in Italy, notions of equality are different than what you may think. Of course, the woman, being a proponent of capitalism, and, in turn, freedom and democracy, is also, naturally, a proponent of women’s rights, and free sexuality. The man is not, absolutely not. He constantly, in private, calls her a capitalist wh-re and a capitalist b-tch, and a pervert. And this, more than anything in the film, is why Swept Away was, is, and will always be troubling.

The man turns the tables on her on the island, and that involves forcing her into the role that he thinks women should play, based on what he has learned from his ideology. He thinks women should cook, clean and wash his underpants, and should cater to his every whim, so he forces her to do this. That is bad enough, but, since he’s also an angry, thickheaded lout, he uses violence against her, in order to ram it into her head that everything about her, her ideology, her attitude, and even her sexuality, is wrong. And when I say violence, I mean violence. I mean punches in the face violence. There’s one scene in the movie, in which he battles her on a sand dune, going so far as to knock her down the hill. Every time he hits her, it’s “That’s for thirty years of Christian Democrats, that’s for raising the price of beef.” etc. And this is before he attempts to rape her -- and then withdraws -- implying that, in his ideal world, only men ought to have the power of sexuality.

Things get even more chilling when she soon starts to fall in love with him. This doesn’t necessarily ensure that the roughness will cease. What does this imply?

If this description disgusts you, then you’re a sensible human being. It ought to disgust you -- such suggestions and imagery ought to give you a reaction. In fact, if you hated this movie, I’d understand. In fact, the first time I watched this movie, I hated it, and wrote a nasty little review in the student newspaper. (Some quotes from that November 10, 1997 write-up “.... this film is the work of an at least slightly unhinged mind.”, “This is a nasty, undesirable little film, and it’s quite creepy when you realize there is a woman sitting in the director’s chair.” “... I was doubling over, in the process of nausea.” ) It was one of my very few one star reviews. So why am I changing my opinion now?

Well, I’ve changed a little bit, I suppose. I’m starting to understand that Wertmuller wasn’t doing what I thought she was doing. All I could see at the time was this man beating this woman, who is depicted in any case as a spoiled rotter who’s ignorant, racist (she called him a “ni-ger” a lot), and class-ist. His behavior is so powerful, that most people would naturally assume that this film condoned this action, and I certainly felt that way at the time. I couldn’t focus on the film -- to be honest, I felt as if I was obliged to hate this film, or else condone what was on the screen, so visceral as it was. Even now, this film is often classified as misogynist, and sick.

But think about this for a moment. Lina Wertmuller is a woman. She’s a filmmaker, she’s an artist. A woman of that background surely wouldn’t approve of a world in which men controlled women, and beat them up, and insulted them as much as the man does in this movie. At the same time, however, I don’t think she would fully approve of what the woman stands for in the first half of this movie (most artists don’t consider themselves raging right-wing capitalists). I don’t think she approves of either of these characters -- what she is making is a satire of politics, plain and simple. The premise is classic screwball comedy, but instead of playing it safe, Wertmuller goes all the way, throwing many, many issues at us, and giving us many visceral and unsettling images, and making it impossible for us to not think about, and argue about, what we see.

These two characters are unpleasant, but we do feel for them. I personally felt more for the woman (naturally!) when she was on the island. It is a rough sight to see her so abused, and when she keeps pleading with him, telling him that she shouldn’t suffer for the problems of the whole world, it’s pretty easy for me to feel sorry for her situation, even if she was such a snob earlier. Nobody deserves that kind of treatment. And some will no doubt understand the man, up to a point, as he is more resourceful than the woman gives him credit for.

Swept Away is a powerful film in its own way, and is obviously a daring work, as troubling as it is. And it is troubling. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise; anyone who is not a little disturbed by this has issues. But it is still a worthwhile experience.


Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV