Lina Wertmüller’s third feature film, Rita la zanzara (1966), was a “musicarello” picture starring Yé-yé sensation Rita Pavone. Wertmüller’s would-be muse Giancarlo Giannini makes his leading man debut as the music professor Paolo who moonlights as a rocker and functions as Rita’s love interest. At this point in her career Lina Wertmüller was still directing under masculine pseudonyms and was essentially a director for hire. However, elements of what would become Wertmüller’s style are already present in Rita la zanzara.
Like so many musicarelli, the plot of Rita la zanzara is relatively thin and functions primarily as a framework to showcase Rita Pavone’s talents. The Cinderella inspired narrative about a school girl out to marry a favorite professor isn’t exactly original. What elevates the plot of Rita la zanzara are the secondary narratives and the quirky bits of characterization that Wertmüller has written into the script. The most compelling of these are the subplot about Rita and her gang’s self-published zine “The Mosquito” and the rather odd detail that Rita is a martial artist (there is a rather silly fight scene).
However the real strengths of Rita la zanzara are those dream sequences that jettison Pavone into specific pastiches of Hollywood starlets. Wertmüller delivers a Marilyn Monroe pastiche first that’s dominated by red hues over white followed by a green Carmen Miranda and then a yellow tinted Jane Russell homage. Each of these three set pieces exist stylistically outside of the rest of Rita la zanzara and predict the boldly post-modern tableaus of Wertmüller’s mature romantic dramas of the seventies.
Aside from a few directorial flourishes Rita la zanzara is very much akin to the live action Disney films and Elvis movies of the mid-sixties except perhaps a bit hornier. It is the charm of the two leads and Wertmüller’s involvement make Rita la zanzara an instantly likable bit of madcap sixties cinema. Rita la zanzara is a funny, brightly colored romp that moves to the rapid beats of Yé-yé; wholly of its moment and yet utterly timeless.
