a beautiful film...

I'm with you theymbg...Wertmuller made some great films and her Swept Away is masterful....I think it's hilarious that Ritchie thought he could bring anything to the plate when he remade this film....Wertmuller's films are too intellectual and complex for the British "auteur" behind the crappy fare of Snatch and Lock, Stock....I second your commendation of Mr. Ritchie.....HACK!!!!! HACK!!!!

You will suffer a fate worse than death...you will become a legend - Alphaville

I'm inclined to agree: even without seeing what is bound to be yet another Ritchie masterwork, I'm not inclined to think anything further can be offered by the self-proclaimed auteur. Though I'm not so elated as "User M2b", (and do in fact believe that Wertmuller intended to display the ambiguity of the situation she created and played out, including the frighteneing adaptability of the Haute-bourgeois woman to adapt), it is a film of insight such that its worth is unquestionable. I just think its odd to think exactly what the person Madonna Ciccione made of the original, to incline her to want to insert herself in the film!

But what I'd like to raise is this less straightforward point: Lina Wertmuller's credit as screewriter of the Madonna-Ritchie work. Does this mean she worked on this new verion herself? Or even gave approval to it? Doesn't her role in the second version raise some questions of degrees of complicity in the lesser film, typical of this era of cinema?

Finally, an interesting quote you attach, theymbg: "The great nations have always acted like gangsters and the small nations like prostitutes". On the whole true, of course, regretfully. (As a curious person born and living in Australia I have reflected on this much). But where do nations like, say, Allende-led Chile and the current Venezuelan regime sit in the equation? Uncomfortably enough to offer some ambiguous hope?