fuckyeahwomenfilmdirectors:

Lina Wertmüller b. August 14, 1928

Wertmüller was born into an aristocratic Swiss family living in Italy. She initially worked in theatre but in 1963 worked briefly as a third assistant director for Federico Fellini on his film 8 ½. She made her directorial debut that same year with the film The Lizards.  In 1966, under the pseudonym George H. Brown she directed the film Rita the Mosquito which was also her first film with actor Giancarlo Giannini. The collaboration would prove a fruitful one. Wertmüller not only worked with Giannini again in the sequel to Rita, Don’t Sting the Mosquito, but she also cast him in her 1972 political satire The Seduction of Mimi alongside actress Mariangela Melato. 

The Seduction of Mimi played In Competition at the Cannes Film Festival and was a huge critical success which lead to Wertmüller casting Giannini and Melato as her leads in another two films: Love & Anarchy and Swept Away. In 1975 Wertmüller cast Giannini as the lead in the film Seven Beauties about a vain man forced to give up everything in order to survive the concentration camps during the Second World War. The film was so successful that after its release in the U.S. the film earned Oscar nominations for Best Actor, Best Original Screenplay, Best Foreign Film, and Best Director making Wertmüller the first woman to be nominated for directing at the Oscars (another woman would not be nominated until 1994, when Jane Campion earned a nomination for The Piano). 

After her success abroad Wertmüller was invited to make studio movies in Hollywood. She made two more films with Giannini: A Night Full of Rain, which was a commercial failure, and Blood Feud. The films would be their last together. Though she continued to work steadily throughout the 1980s and 1990s, she never again attained the success she had during her mid-70s collaborations with Giannini. Her last full length feature film was the 2004 comedy Too Much Romance… It’s Time for Stuffed Peppers starring Sophia Loren.

She is the subject of the 2015 documentary Behind the White Glasses.