Wertmüller, Lina

Wertmüller, Lina

 orig. Arcangela Wertmüller von Elgg

(born Aug. 14, 1928, Rome, Italy) Italian film director. After working as a puppeteer and stage actress and director, she became an assistant to Federico Fellini and began writing and directing her own films in 1963. She achieved international fame with The Seduction of Mimi (1972), a satire on sexual hypocrisy, and Love and Anarchy (1972). Her most controversial works were the witty Swept Away (1974) and the morally ambiguous Seven Beauties (1976), about a man scrabbling to survive in a Nazi concentration camp. Her later movies, including Ciao, Professore (1994), were less successful.