"The Seduction of Mimi" is an uninspired English translation of "Mimi metallurgico ferito nell'onore", the original title of the film whose approximate equivalent would be "Mimi the metallurgist wounded in his honor". The author is Lina Wertmüller, an Italian director whose films are always original and not just by their names. This 1972 film captures some of the main features of Italian society at the time - violence, organized crime, capitalist exploitation, the North-South economic gap, corruption, hypocrisy - in a way that is both entertaining and thought-provoking. It does it in a style that mixes the radical social comments of the directors of the previous generation like Pasolini with the best tradition of Italian comedies of morals and characters. Add to that the extraordinary charisma of Giancarlo Giannini (this role that had been refused by several actors among which Marcelo Mastroiani was their first collaboration) and the audacity of the screenwriter director that I can only imagine facing the chevaliers of political correctness in the film studios of today. The result is a foamy film, which does not show too many signs of erosion, although its age is close to half a century.
Carmelo Mandocheo called Mimi could be one of those heroes in Chaplin's movies that seems to never be abandoned by bad luck. The beginning of the film finds him a worker in a stone quarry in Sicily, married to a wife who is shy to the point of frigidity, and who gets in trouble after being discovered that he voted in the elections with the communists and not with the Mafia candidates. He has no choice but to join the wave of internal migrants from southern to northern Italy in those years. Arriving in Turin, he quickly finds that everyone who spins the wheels of the system seems to be part of the same mafia clan - from the industrialists who employ him to the trade unionists. The meeting with the beautiful Trotskyist (a word he can't pronounce) Fiorella triggers a love story that can't end too well, especially after the heads of the ubiquitous Mafia send him back to Sicily. We are in the midst of a full and frothy Italian family comedy, with the double meaning of the word 'family' in a Sicilian context.
Giancarlo Giannini makes a great role here. In a matter of seconds, he can switch from funny comedy to social drama, from passionate lover to self-persiflage. Mariangela Melato, an extremely talented and expressive actress, whom I don't remember seeing in other movies from that period, is his partner. The whole team of actors is very well chosen. The screenplay and directorial approach of Lina Wertmüller combines Italian farce and morality comedy with social media film, adding a dose of boldness and frankness that is present in the Italian cinema of the time but not necessarily in political movies. Where her peers spoke out angrily, Lina Wertmüller used the acid of satire. Her place among the significant Italian directors of the period is well deserved, and 'The Seduction of Mimi' is one of her films that does not disappoint its viewers today.
