Themes: Crimes Against Humanity, Life Under Occupation
Main Cast: Giancarlo Giannini, Fernando Rey, Shirley Stoler, Elena Fiore
Release Year: 1976
Country: IT
Run Time: 115 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
Italian filmmaker Lina Wertmuller directs the black comedy Pasqualino Settebellezze (Seven Beauties). During WWII, Pasqualino Frafuso (Giancarlo Giannini) ends up lost in a dense forest along with fellow army deserter Francesco (Piero De Orio). After they witness a mass execution by German soldiers, Francesco admits his moral opposition to the Nazis and Pasqualino reveals his criminal past in a series of flashbacks. Back in Naples, he was known as "Pasqualino Seven Beauties," a petty thief who lived off the profits of his seven sisters while claiming to protect their honor at any cost. When Totonno (Mario Conti) pimps out his sister Concettina (Elena Fiore), Pasqualino kills him, chops up his body, and mails each piece across the country. He is then arrested and sent to a mental institution, where he commits sexual assault against another patient. Kicked out of the asylum, he is sent to fight in the army. The Germans capture him and he gets sent to a concentration camp. He then plots to make his escape by demoralizing himself in an attempt to seduce a German officer (Shirley Stoler). Seven Beauties was nominated for four Academy Awards in 1977, including Best Foreign Film. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide
Review
A small-time hood goes to a Nazi concentration camp, an insane asylum, and the Italian army in this tragic comedy under the critical eye of director Lina Wertmuller. A frequent Wertmuller leading man, Giancarlo Giannini plays Pasquale, a macho caricature who struts around Europe demoralizing himself for the sake of his family's honor. With Chaplinesque motions and exaggerated facial gestures, Giannini is wonderful as this despicable character, who embodies the false sense of dignity in male chauvinism as he is supported by his hard-working yet equally despicable seven sisters. As the assistant director for Fellini's 8 1/2, Wertmuller seems to have been influenced by that director, especially in her grotesque characters like the family of prostitutes and the dominatrix Nazi commander. Her style is completely her own, however, as she allows her characters to sink to the lowest depths of humanity for the sake of their own survival. Seven Beauties was nominated for four Academy awards in 1976, including Best Director for Wertmuller, the first woman to be nominated in that category. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide
The picaresque story follows the life of its hero, Pasqualino, played by Giancarlo Giannini as he and another soldier have deserted the Italian Army somewhere in Germany. They are captured and sent to a concentration camp where Pasqualino tries to seduce the large and unattractive female commandant (Shirley Stoler) in order to save his own life. The plan succeeds except for the fact that Pasqualino is put in charge of the barracks and has to select six men to be killed under the threat that they will all be killed if he doesn't do it. Pasqualino ends up shooting his best friend in the head and being responsible for his other friend's death, an Italian Anarchist. Earlier in the film Pasqualino kills the pimp who turned his sister into a prostitute to save the family honor. Pasqualino later prostitutes himself and upon his return to Naples finds that his seven sisters, fiancee and even his mother have survived and become prostitutes.
Bruno Bettelheim, while admiring the film's artistry, severely criticizes the impression it makes of the experience of concentration camp survivors in his 1976 essay "Surviving"[1].
Trivia
Shirley Stoler's character was based on Ilse Koch, notoriously known as the "the Bitch of Buchenwald". The wife of the camp's commandant Karl Otto Koch, she took sadistic pleasure in the torture of inmates, and was suspected of having lampshades made out of the skin of inmates.
Giancarlo Giannini stars in three other films Wertmuller made during this period, "Love and Anarchy", "The Seduction of Mimi" and "Swept Away". As in the latter film, Giannini here plays a character who is dominated by a woman.
The film was controversial at the time for its graphic depiction of concentration camp scenes. Pasqualino's nickname "Seven Beauties" ("Settebellezze") refers to the fact that he has seven ugly sisters. His family name in the film is Frafuso.
Aldo Valletti has a little cameo as a patient in the same insane asylum Pasqualino.
References
^ Bruno Bettelheim. Surviving and Other Essays. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979
