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Grace Russo Bullaro. Man in Disorder: The Cinema of Lina Wertmuller in the 1970s.

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Grace Russo Bullaro. Man in Disorder: The Cinema of Lina Wertmuller in the 1970s. Leicester: Troubador, 2007.

That Lina Wertmuller's films have stirred controversy is evident from the strong lack of consensus of criticai reviews. They have been appreciated for their innovation and complexity and maligned for their contrivedness. Grace Russo Bullaro's volume examines the period of most controversy, the 1970s. While making reference to Italian reception, the book keeps its focus on Wertmuller's reception by American audiences and critics, intending an American audience as its main readership. To this end, the author provides a close reading of the four films that have received the most attention in the US and were responsible for Wertmuller's happy reception there, The Seduction of Mimi (1972), Love and Anarchy (1973), Swept Away (1974), and Seven Beauties (1975), and ends with the author's 2006 interview with Lina Wertmuller.

In the Introduction, the author considers two reasons for Wertmuller's resounding success and eventual criticai and popular decline in the US. In the 1970s, Wertmuller's oeuvre enjoyed much greater success in the US than in Italy, where it was deemed a "(trite) and cliched" representation of the commedia all'italiana (xv). In the US, critics at first pronounced it "avant-garde," but when later placing it within the Italian comedic tradition, no longer considered it a radical departure (xv). It is in American academe that Wertmuller's films have been most consistently appreciated, for their indebtedness to the Italian...

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