A few years prior to making her landmark achievement as the first woman to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director, Lina Wertmüller helmed The Seduction of Mimi, marking the Italian director’s first collaboration with star Mariangela Melato. Recently restored in 4K, the 1972 sex comedy, which was a Cannes Film Festival selection, will now be receiving a theatrical release beginning April 24 at NYC’s Film Forum. We’re pleased to exclusively debut the new trailer and poster, courtesy of Kino Lobrber.
Here’s the synopsis: “This raucous sex comedy that brought international fame to director Lina Wertmuller (Swept Away) centers on sad sack Mimi, a Sicilian laborer whose refusal to vote for the Mafia’s candidate leads him to lose his job, his wife, and his home. At rock bottom, he revives his spirits by falling in love with the beautiful, radical Fiorella, with whom he starts a new life as a reliable husband and father. But the past comes back to haunt him, piling on comical complexities as all his energies surge into defending his honor, an obsession that has horrendous but hilarious consequences. A blistering satire of Italy in the 1970s, The Seduction of Mimi takes aim at a corrupt government, compromised labor leaders and the Neanderthal sexual politics of men in power, with uproarious results.”
The National Museum of Cinema in Turin and Minerva Pictures present the 4K digital restoration. The restoration was carried out from the original picture negative and sound negative in 35mm preserved at Cinecittà Studios. The picture negative presented two gaps, which were reconstructed from a period positive print preserved at the Cineteca of the National Museum of Cinema. For collaboration on color correction and audio restoration, the team thanks Imago VFX and Audio Innova Srl (Centre for Computational Sonology, University of Padua). The restoration was carried out at the laboratory of the Cineteca of the National Museum of Cinema in 2024.
See the trailer below for the new restoration of the film, which was remade in the U.S. just a few years following its releas as Which Way Is Up? starring Richard Pryor.
