Places and Spaces: The Public Sphere and Privacy in Lina Wertmüller's Love and Anarchy
1 Political and theoretical discussions regarding the spheres of the public and private are an almost classical topos in feminist academic debate. Challenging the binary opposition between privacy and public space, revisionist feminist thinkers have sought to expose the qualified dependency of the political-institutional public sphere on the private sphere, which it regulates but from which it is nonetheless excluded, and to decry the mechanisms of power and domination associated with the division between the two spheres.
2 In conjunction with other scenic and literary techniques, that is, means of strong intermedial, calculated cinematic construction, Lina Wertmüller's film Love and Anarchy[1]The film begins with its main character Tonino (Giancarlo Giannini) at a turning point in his life, the execution of an older relative for political subversion. After viewing the body on display in what would otherwise by an idyllic rural setting, Tonino is inspired to take over what he perceives as his relative's mission, the assassination of Benito Mussolini. Tonino goes to Rome and links up with his anarchist contact, a highly sought after call girl named Salomè (another Wertmüller regular Mariangela Melato), her brothel is popular with the Fascists and Mussolini's head of security, an arrogant blow-hard named Spatoletti (Eros Pagni), is especially fond of Salomè. Tonino and young call girl Tripolina (Lina Polito) soon fall in love which serves to greatly complicate his mission. Tonino does the madam a favor, and, in exchange, Tripolina gets two days off to spend with him. We soon learn that Tripolina returns his love, and the tragic stage is set. Knowing full well that the assassination attempt, successful or not, will surely mean his death, Tonino is suddenly gripped by fear. When all he had at stake was a quiet life on the farm, he was glad to give it up for a chance at changing the quality of life for his peasant countrymen. But now, having tasted the happiness love can afford, can Tonino really carry through with this suicidal act? Can he truly give up his life for a belief he once thought was worth dying? How will this love affair, Salomè's political will, and the assassination plans play out? (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070061/; 29/12/06) succeeds in bringing the private-public binarism into play in a way which oscillates between the two poles. Wertmüller subverts the traditional demarcation of the private and public, which has long served as an instrument of power in patriarchal societies, and mounts a discursive challenge to the pre-defined division of the spheres of public and private.
3 Lina Wertmüller's female protagonists, archaic and lusty, and characterized by a Southern temperament and élan vital, seem to evade every attempt to subject the film to a political reading. However, to claim that the film were characterized by an absence of the political and fails to openly discuss ideology is to ignore that it employs aesthetics as a means of expressing the political. Addressing the issue of space in totalitarianism, the film's pictures thus explore the superimposition of the public sphere by a private world of imagination, of which Hannah Arendt conceived as a history of demise of the public sphere, in relation to space and intimacy.
4 Influenced by Seyla Benhabib's criticism of Hannah Arendt I shall interpret Lina Wertmüller's film Love and Anarchy - unique in its new treatment of the borders between private and public - as a play on Hannah Arendt's concept of agonal and narrative action. What, according to Benhabib, should become compulsory exercise for feminists can be gainfully related to the film Love and Anarchy. I will pay particular attention to the correlation between the 'history of demise' and space and the public sphere.
5 In her reading of Hannah Arendt, Benhabib develops a conception of the public sphere which highlights the dependence of gender division on the separation of the public and private spheres. In this conception, space is understood as providing the opportunity for action which becomes politically significant, that is, as a location of empowerment and of common action through speaking and conviction.