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Salient. Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 42 No. 6. April 2 1979

Love and Anarchy

Love and Anarchy

I've only seen two films by Lina Wertmuller, this one and Seven Beauties (which screened at the Lido late last year), but the similarities between the two are striking. Both are set in the Italy of Mussolini, and the same actor takes the lead role in each. But far more significant is the response Wertmuller achieves from her audience. In watching both films we are deluged with a chaotic and hilarious mix of bawdy fun, satire, and slapstick farce; and then there is introduced a dark twist in the last section that kicks the skateboard out from under us and leaves us not knowing whether to laugh or cry.

In Seven Beauties, Pasqualino gets into all sorts of ridiculous situations in his zeal to protect his family honour, only to finally sell out that honour completely in order to survive in a concentration camp. In Love and Anarchy (the earlier film of the two, incidentally, being first released in 1973), the wide-eyed Chaplinesque hero is a would be political assassin who, for the greater part of the film, has a whale of a time stumbling around the bordello he's hiding out in, before coming to a brutal end at the hands of the Duce's secret police. The effect is all the more chilling because we've been laughing with the film all the way. It's a hard stunt to pull off, but Wertmuller by alternatively wearing the masks of comedy and tragedy with such assurance, and keeping them in such tightly controlled balance, does it with real flair.

Perhaps the most impressive part of it is the way she's structured these films, so that after the two modes have been alternating (for the horror is always subtly in the background), the comedy and tragedy climax at one and the same time: the characters are in a sense at their funniest when they're at their most tragic and pathetic. Sound confusing? It's certainly disorienting. And a kind of shock to the system (or the sensibilities) that's hard to cope with. How should I react to a fim like this? How did I react? Well, as you can see, every which way but lucid. Groan.

A Political Stance

Another thing you can't help but notice about Love and Anarchy is its concern with politics. It's a good thing there are responsible people around who can warn us (especially us younger ones who weren't in the last war) what a terrible thing fascism is. We're extra lucky here at Victoria to have Salient and Simon Wilson (and at the moment, Downstage) to keep reminding us. Otherwise we might make the mistake of putting the PM's meanness down to colic or trouble with Thea, and forget the real issues. Good grief, we'd be voting National before you could say "$9 increase", which would be just awful.

So Lina's a good thing in that respect. She doesn't like fascists. And she makes sure we don't either they're baddies alright. But we don't get given the cartoon villainy that characterized Bernardo Bertolucci's 1900 (which is, now I mention it, coming back for a return season, so whatever you do don't miss it — it's a huge, beautiful, and absolutely riveting film; kind of an opera without singing in the form of a socialist reply to Gone With The Wind. Sometimes nutty, but intense and very deeply felt. Bertolucci did, after all, make Last Tango In Paris.

Mussolini

Mussolini

Surprisingly in fact, in Love and Anarchy we don't get much cartoonery at all. The players look like caricatures - one of the principal women seems a grotesque parody of Jean Harlow, the other a shop-soiled Mary Pickford — but they are emotionally complex and their conflict makes for very satisfying drama. And while the fascists are irredeemably wicked, the idealists are all hopelessly confused.

It is significant that not one of the characters from the left we meet is motivated by strong political ideology. They conspire to assassinate for assorted and purely personal reasons: revenge, outrage, a need to hit back at the system, even sentimentality. The reason they fail is because their emotions get in the way. Love and anarchy are revealed as two sides of the same coin, two different expressions of similar basic urges. It seems anarchism, or any kind of social/ political idealism, is doomed because it will be destroyed by the very forces that inspire it. The emphasis falls on the human condition (excuse the over-used phrase) rather than on any politically propagandist viewpoint.

Final Unity; Bleak Vision

Looked at this way, we can see how Wertmuller's tragedy (of the betrayal of ideals) fits together with her black comedy. The latter sees in both films the protangonist staggering ludicrously under the weight of a dead body (in Seven Beauties, chopped up and in three suitcases sniffed at by dogs), and it's a telling image.

In this director's world, the spirit and the flesh are both willing, but also both fatally weak. The way to survive is not to take on responsibilities, or be idealistic but abandon these weights: to be like [unclear: pr] lino in Seven Beauties and forget [unclear: yo] ciples; or to be like most of the [unclear: pro] in Love and Anarchy and accept [unclear: wi] scruple (unfortunate word!) or [unclear: thog] new customer or regime that comes [unclear: a] But then, the films ask, what have [unclear: yo] vived for? On the other hand, if [unclear: you] for what you believe in, isn't that [unclear: jus] meaningless, ultimately?

In Love and Anarchy, [unclear: monuments] past overshadow the characters and [unclear: i] themselves on the action, and the [unclear: en]ment we often see the conspirators [unclear: in] sists of rigid geometrical forms, [unclear: lines] point at them and fence them in. [unclear: In] instances they are usually seen [unclear: from] tance, small and insignificant. Who [unclear: c] fight against such overwhelming [unclear: forc] What's the use of resistance anyway?

The film's final image is of pure [unclear: ge] try, the corner of the prison cell, [unclear: com] unchanged by the life or death of [unclear: thi] cular anarchist, or any that came [unclear: bef] Order prevails. So what's better, [unclear: to] and die, or to lose out and live? [unclear: Bott] very black indeed.

Pretty grim stuff to come from [unclear: on] the funniest, most uproarious films [unclear: to] the city in a long time.

Paul Hagan