Now that class warfare is in the open, thanks to a certain billionaire, it is a good time to talk about Swept Away.

In the 1974 film directed and written by the late, brilliant, Italian director Lina Wertmüller, when the “puttana ricca” Raffaella Pavone Lanzetti (played by Mariangela Melato) gets knocked around by the deckhand, Gennarino Carunchio (played by Giancarlo Giannini, a regular in the Wertmüller’s cinema), we are plunged into a swarm of conflicted feelings. Yes, she is the worst. Indeed, the sailor has been abused by an economic system that concentrates socially produced wealth into a few hands. But the working-class man becomes a monster.

This confusion of feelings is worsened by the fact that Melato is a brilliant actor. She is Raffaella Pavone Lanzetti: a woman who hates even the smell of labor. And when, on the yacht owned by her filthy rich husband, she treats the deckhand (Giuseppe) like a dog, we do not doubt it for a minute. This is her to the max. Then the storm happens. Then the little boat the deckhand and woman happen to be on is blown to the island. Then Giuseppe, who can fish and do other useful life-supporting things, is in power. He has complete control over Raffaella. And he abuses this power with shocking violence.

We are not talking about the 2002 remake directed by Guy Ritchie. Nothing positive can be said about that film, which has Ritchie’s then-wife, Madonna, as its star. The biggest problem I have with the remake is that I don’t hate Madonna. Sure, she was never much of a singer, but she emerged from a New York City that, between 1978 and 1984, was magical. So watching her portray a rich, ice-cold woman is nothing but brutal.

Madonna can’t act, and so she could never be anything like the horrible character (Amber Leighton) she plays; a woman who never lifted a finger in her life, a woman whose indifference to working-class misery and struggles is total. This is not Madonna. It’s not in her bones. She began as a little mall flower. A dreamer who had nothing but raw, blond ambition. And so when, in the movie, she is stranded on an uninhabited Mediterranean island with a violently misogynistic deckhand, Giuseppe Esposito (Adriano Giannini), who worked on the storm-swept luxury ship her husband chartered, we are horrified. He treats the “rich bitch” like shit. He smacks her around. But all we see is some man hitting and spitting on Madonna! She supported the gay community during the darkest hours in the ’80s. Leon Robinson played a controversial Black saint in her video for the song “Like a Prayer.” Why is this brute punching, kicking, and slapping Madonna?

But the viciousness in the original film is visceral and believable. The most brutal scene in Wertmüller’s movie occurs at the start of its second half. Giuseppe is chasing Raffaella up and down dunes because she disobeyed an order (“undress”). This time, he is going to teach her a lesson. She will pay for everything that’s wrong with society. Whenever he catches or tackles her, he really lays into her while delivering angry commentary about how the rich exploit the poor. “[You] fucking whore. Capitalist. Social democrat.” “This is about the financial session caused by you and your friends.” “[This is] for tax evasion and money you sent to Switzerland.” “This is for the unfortunate who can’t find a bed in the hospital.” “This [is for increasing] meat prices, in parmesan.” “This is for oil and soft drinks.” “This is because you made us afraid of life.” (By the way, Giuseppe is a communist.)

What is going on here? What is Wertmüller pointing out? The limits of Marxism. The thing that must be appreciated in Swept Away is its scientific approach, isolating a system so its basic properties can be examined. Wertmüller does this by isolating two of three properties of capitalism, labor and capital, on an island. The late German economist Peter Flaschel turned to Goethe’s Faust to describe these elementary units of capitalism: “Two souls, alas, are housed within my breast / And each will wrestle for the mastery there.”

But Wertmüller’s story has a twist. She introduces gender into the isolated system (in science, a system is the subject of an experiment, and whatever is outside of it is the universe). What would this experiment have looked like if it isolated Giuseppe and Raffaella’s husband, Signor Pavone Lanzetti (Riccardo Salvino)? Something far less complicated than what we find in Wertmüller’s Swept Away, which challenges the orthodox Marxist insistence that class is universal, and all other issues, such as identity, are secondary or, more philosophically, accidental. The universal subject of history will melt all the accidental properties of capitalism into air. Wertmüller’s experiment does a number on universalist Marxism.

But there is also Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness to consider. Those familiar with this 2022 film will not miss its Swept Away echoes. There is a luxury ship of rich people serviced by the working class. There is a storm that’s followed by an attack by African pirates. There is an explosion, a sinking, and a few survivors on an uninhabited island. One of them knows how to fish and do life-supporting things. This is Abigail (Dolly de Leon), one of the ship’s cleaners. Abigail sees her opportunity and seizes it. But she is not ideological; she is a mere low-wage earner in a capitalism that’s now global.

Wertmüller’s Swept Away is really about Italy, which went through political turbulence during the 1970s. Triangle of Sadness is truly sad because Marxism has been reduced to a ship’s alcoholic captain (Woody Harrelson), who seems to have learned about Marx and socialism from quotes posted on Instagram. As much as we hate Giuseppe in Swept Away, he at least knew his stuff. His critique of capitalism has some depth. In Triangle of Sadness, there is no such depth. The cleaning person’s abuse of power on the island (she demands sex from the boyfriend of an internet influencer) is not shocking. Trading places seems normal in Östlund’s capitalism.

All in all, the system of exploitation that organizes the whole of our planet makes no sense if its opponents exclude race and gender. This was Wertmüller’s explosive contribution to leftist theory. And it is why the left must not abandon identity politics. It is clear that the right hasn’t. All of the president’s men are superrich and white. And they are beating the shit out of the rest.

 

See Swept Away at the Beacon Cinema, March 9–12.