Lina Wertmüller Died: What Was Her Cause Of Death?

Italian director Lina Wertmüller, a benchmark for 20th-century cinema in her country and one of the pioneers behind the cameras, died today at the age of 93, local media report.

Her death has provoked the immediate reaction of Italian politicians and celebrities, who have remembered her on social networks as an icon.  No cause of death has been revealed at this time.

Wertmüller had received the honorary Oscar in 2019 for her career, which includes dozens of titles such as “Mimi metallurgico ferito nell’onore” (1972), all marked by great sensitivity, sarcasm and with long and striking titles.

The filmmaker, one of the referents of the second half of the 20th century, was the first woman to compete for the Oscar for best director in the history of the award, in 1977 for “Pastualino settebellezze”.

The director was born in Rome in 1928, into a wealthy family of Swiss origins, hence her surname, and during her youth she began studying at the theater academy, debuting as a director of puppet shows.

In these years she would meet the set designer Enrico Job, whom he married in 1988 and adopted her only daughter, Maria Zullima.

Her film debut took place in 1963, as an assistant to Federico Fellini in one of her masterpieces, “8 y Medio”, and that same year she signed her first direction, “I basilischi”, a passionate portrait of a pack of boys from the abandoned south Italian.

Thus began the career of one of the first and most acclaimed directors in the history of cinema, endowed with a more than original sensitivity towards social issues and with a sarcastic, surreal and grotesque trait for which she is often placed among the renovators of the “Italian comedy.”

One of her first successes was the story of “Mimì”, a Sicilian worker who loses her job for voting for the Communist Party but finds a new one helped by the mafia.

Her filmography is full of convoluted, long titles, almost impossible to remember: “Film d’amore e d’anarchia overo: stamattina alle 10 in via dei Fiori nella nota casa di tolleranza…” (1973) or “Fatto di sangue fra due uomini for cause I gave a vedova. Si sospettano moventi politici ”(1978).

Her first great international triumph was with “Pasquelino Settebellezze”, starring the Italian Giancarlo Giannini and the Spanish Fernando Rey.

It was the survival story of a Neapolitan cocky, always shrewd and opportunistic, who managed to overcome all kinds of obstacles, even the Nazi concentration camp.

The film was a huge success, earning him a Golden Globe nomination and four Oscars for Best Actor, Best Foreign Film, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Direction, the latter the first time for a woman.

In 2019 she collected the honorary Oscar, accompanied by her daughter and by the hands of another of the greats of Italian cinema, Sophia Loren, and showing her notorious sense of humor and irony, she proposed to put a female name on the award.

Amelia Warner writes all the Latest Articles. She mostly covers Entertainment topics, but at times loves to write about movie reviews as well.

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