Crossing the Line: Gender Transgressions in Three Italian Films

Abstract

As a medium that produces both a visual and spoken interpretation of elements of social identity, cinema proffers an instructive look at a culture's reaction to challenges to the gender conventions that define it. Alessandro Blasetti's La corona di ferro (1941), Bernardo Bertolucci's Il conformista (1970), and Lina Wertmuller's Sotto … Sotto … Strapazzato d'anomala passione (1984) reveal what can occur when individuals step outside the strict parameters of gender enforced by society and usher in the possibility of alternatives to the heterosexual union. The way the three films respond to their female characters' attempts at controlling gender provides insight into the social unease with the interpretation of masculinity and femininity. Indeed, the films mobilize to strengthen and reaffirm conventional gender categories. The female character who defies conventional codes of feminine behavior in these films is, respectively, the transvestite, the androgyne, and the lesbian. Because they obfuscate the social preference for transparency, they cannot be drawn as protagonists of a successful narrative. As a result, the main narrative works to remove them, or at least the threat they pose.