Places and Spaces: The Public Sphere and Privacy in Lina Wertmüller's Love and Anarchy

Abstract

Making use of scenic and literary techniques, that is, means of strong intermedial, calculated cinematic construction, Lina Wertmüller's film Love and Anarchy 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.