This film or the one made just after, Seven Beauties? It's interesting that one shows a woman having to change her behaviour before the the opposite sex to survive, the other vice versa. Wertmuller was certainly on a roll at this stage in her career and seemed absorbed in the same sort of theme, even using the same leading man to express it in two variations.
An age in which machine-gun editing has replaced the cinematic equivalent of perfect pitch
Swept Away had both characters change their behavior (American speaking) for the opposite sex. Entertainment quoted a 1970's American feminist Ellen Willis, and I thought you would be interested due to the topic you posted. She said that Swept Away "panders to two classic male supremacist lies: that women dominate men and that women are parasites while men do all the work." I disagree with Willis in the same way I disagree with a lot of American feminists. I think that they see sexisma as the only issue in modern day society and don't even acknowledge class issues. In fact, I think Melato changed her behavior for Giannini not just because they were reverting to primitive roles, but because she had to alter her rich capitalist lifestyle to survive on the island. Americans think poverty is the fault of the poor and revert to extreme factors such as race, sexism, and disability as the only equality.
shareConsider that the two characters are also social and political symbols, Giannini being the underdeveloped exploited south (he speaks with a strong Sicilian accent), Melato (Milanese accent) the whealthy north - the "industrial bitch"..
Of course. They're both included with class.
shareI compared the two version in the 2002 board, so I decided to paste here:
This remake movie misses the point.
There are deeper themes to this movie, and among them is the power between man and woman and how when all is strippped away (society, money, ect), then the woman becomes the submissive again. Her ugly haughty disrespectful attitude is put into place, and she learns humility. He breaks her, and in doing so, she releases all her past bitterness and ungrateful ways, so she learns to respect and honor him.
Somehow the remake misses these things, and its more about "hey I need to eat, I will be obedient so I can get fish."
The greatness about the original is that you see two extremes pitted against each other. A misogynistic male v.s. a powerful female: rich, independent, yet obnoxious and disprespectful. The type that is highly demanding and looks down on her hired help. So, when they are left on the island, she immediately starts treating him like a servant, a dog.
Throughout the movie you see him "breaking" her and she learns submission because she *NEEDS* him since her pampered background doesn't allow her to survive on her own.
In the madonna version, it is good - but you don't see these two people as extreme as in the original. (And I love madonna, but let's face it - her acting is mediocre. Her "little-girl act" just doesn't cut it anymore. (Her best and only good work is Evita.) The fact that the characters are more extreme (the misogynistic male v.s. the obnoxious bitch) makes the old movie much more intense. And like I said earlier, the characters are more flat, and madonna is only "changing" because she wants to survive and get fed. In the older version, there is much more profound dynamics.
I found the old version of this movie more passionate too. Political and social submission to men is by no means spicy. But there was something about the sexual submission in the original movie that I found very sexy. Madonna's version wasn't as sexy because the buildup wasn't as instense as the older version.
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Since none of the previous posters managed to answer the original question, I'll take it upon myself. Based on how much I liked Swept Away, I rented Seven Beauties. I don't think I made it more than half an hour into it. Other than in Fellini movies, and obviously Antonioni movies, where there is minimal dialogue, one of my biggest complaints about Italian cinema is the hyperbolic hystrionics. The yelling, the shouting, calling all the women whores, swearing by the Madonna every two seconds and on and on. Honestly, it grates on my nerves. Maybe it was a great film (and worthy of 4 OSCAR noms if you can believe that), but, I wouldn't know because the cacophony of Giancarlo Giannini and seven italian women was too much for me. Maybe you've got a stronger stomach for those types of movies, but don't say I didn't warn you.
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