NOTE: The below Blu-ray captures were taken directly from the Blu-ray disc.

ADDITION: Kino International / Raro Blu-ray (November 2026): Kino International / Raro have transferred Lina Wertmüller's The Seduction of Mimi to Blu-ray. It is on a dual-layered disc with a max’ed out bitrate. The 1080P transfer is in the film’s original 1.85:1 aspect ratio. It comes from the 4K restoration by the Museo Nazionale del Cinema di Torino and Minerva Pictures, made from the original 35mm picture and sound negatives preserved at Cinecittà. This appears to be a step up from Kino’s 2012 Blu-ray, which was single-layered and was criticized at the time for compression and uneven grain. The new image looks like film, with healthy, consistent grain that is never smoothed away, and the encode handles it without strain. Detail is very strong in Wertmüller’s tight close-ups. The textures of Giannini’s stubble and curls, the bandage on his forehead, and the weave of Fiore’s hand-knitted sweaters are all vividly rendered. The scene of clasped hands against the crocheted blanket shows how much fine texture the negative holds. Colors are bold and natural. The bright yellow and orange forklifts in the warehouse, the multi-colored knits, and the saturated red backdrop behind Diberti’s close-up all stand out without bleeding. Skin tones run warm and believable. Contrast is solid, with deep blacks in the night scenes, such as the Mafia gathering in the cavernous hangar, while shadow detail is retained. A few interiors look a bit dim, but that seems true to the photography rather than a transfer issue. I saw no damage of note. This is a beautiful, film-like presentation and easily the best the film has looked on home video.

NOTE: We have added 66 more large resolution Blu-ray captures (in lossless PNG format) for DVDBeaver Patrons HERE.

The Kino / Raro Blu-ray disc offers a DTS-HD Master 2.0 track in the original Italian at 24-bit, a lossless rendering of the restored mono track. The dialogue was post-synced, as was standard in Italian production of the time, and it is clean and clear with no hiss or crackle. Piero Piccioni’s score moves between the jaunty, mock-heroic themes and the lusher romantic passages for Mimì and Fiore, and it sounds full and lively for its era. The noise of factory floors, street crowds, and Sicilian piazzas is busy and well layered. The 2012 Kino disc had a lossless mono track as well, but this one comes from the restored sound negative and mostly likely  sounds cleaner and more robust. Kino / Raro offer optional English subtitles on their Region FREE Blu-ray.

The extras on this Kino International / Raro Blu-ray add a new audio commentary by film historian Samm Deighan (The Legacy of World War II in European Arthouse Cinema.) She places The Seduction of Mimi in Wertmüller’s career and in the political cinema of early-1970s Italy. She discusses the director’s first pairing of Giancarlo Giannini and Mariangela Melato, the film’s mix of satire and sexual farce, and its sometimes divisive treatment of class, gender, and Southern Italian honor culture. It is well researched and engaging, the kind of track Deighan does very well. There is also a re-release trailer (1:31), and Kino includes trailers for Ferdinando and Carolina, Summer Night (original theatrical and U.S. trailers), and Swept Away (original theatrical and re-release trailers.)

Lina Wertmüller's The Seduction of Mimi is a picaresque satire of a Sicilian laborer whose one act of political defiance sends him north to Turin, into factory politics, union meetings, and the arms of a Trotskyist street vendor, only for the Mafia, the Church, the Party, and his own wounded machismo to trap him at every turn. Giancarlo Giannini (L'Innocente, Libido, Seven Beauties, The Black Belly of the Tarantula, Swept Away, The Bankers of God: The Calvi Affair,) is wonderful as Mimì: bug-eyed, twitchy, full of borrowed rhetoric and much less in control of his fate than he believes. Mariangela Melato (Summer Night, Swept Away, Nada,) brings the film's warmth and moral center as Fiore, and Agostina Belli (Revolver, Bluebeard, The Night of the Devils, The Fifth Cord,) is the abandoned wife whose infidelity sets off Mimì's absurd quest for revenge. Dario Di Palma's (Death Laid an Egg,) sun-bleached Sicily and gray industrial Turin, along with Wertmüller's grotesque, wide-angle close-ups, give the film its caricatured energy, and Piero Piccioni's (Adua and Her Friends, Hands Over the City, L'assassino, The Moment of Truth, The 10th Victim,) score comments slyly on the action throughout. The film sprawls, and its politics are delivered at full volume, but its picture of a working man caught between ideologies that all exploit him has aged better than many of the earnest political films of its day. The Kino/Raro Blu-ray offers a stunning 1080P transfer from the new 4K restoration, taken from the original negatives, on a dual-layered disc with a max'ed out bitrate. It adds a lossless Italian track, a valuable new commentary by Samm Deighan, and a collection of Wertmüller trailers. It is a major upgrade over the 2012 Kino disc and the edition to own. Warmly recommended.  

Gary Tooze