''Seven Beauties'' ( it, Pasqualino Settebellezze, "Pasqualino Sevenbeauties") is a 1975

Italian language Italian (''italiano'' or ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire. Together with Sardinian, Italian is the least divergent language from Latin. Spoken by about 8 ...

film written and directed by

Lina Wertmüller Arcangela Felice Assunta Wertmüller von Elgg Spanol von Braueich (14 August 1928 – 9 December 2021), known as Lina Wertmüller (), was an Italian film director and screenwriter. She is best known for her 1970s art house films '' Seven Beauti ...

and starring

Giancarlo Giannini Giancarlo Giannini (born 1 August 1942) is an Italian actor and voice actor. He won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor for his performance in '' Love and Anarchy'' (1973) and received an Academy Award nomination for '' Seven Beauties ...

Fernando Rey Fernando Casado Arambillet (La Coruña (Spain), 20 September 1917 – Madrid (Spain), 9 March 1994), best known as Fernando Rey, was a Spanish film, theatre, and television actor, who worked in both Europe and the United States. A suave, i ...

, and

Shirley Stoler Shirley Stoler (March 30, 1929 – February 17, 1999) was an American actress best known for her roles in ''The Honeymoon Killers'' and Lina Wertmüller's ''Seven Beauties''. Early years The eldest of four children born to Russian Jewish im ...

. Written by Wertmüller, the film is about an Italian everyman who deserts the army during World War II and is captured by the Germans and sent to a prison camp, where he does anything he can to survive. Through flashbacks, we learn about his seven unattractive sisters, his accidental murder of one sister's lover, his imprisonment in an insane asylum—where he rapes a patient—and his volunteering to be a soldier to escape confinement. For her work on the film, Wertmüller became the first woman nominated for the

Academy Award for Best Director The Academy Award for Best Director (officially known as the Academy Award of Merit for Directing) is an award presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). It is given in honor of a film director who has exhibi ...

. The film received three other

Academy Award The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment ind ...

nominations, including one for Best Foreign Language Film. It also received a

Golden Globe Award The Golden Globe Awards are accolades bestowed by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association beginning in January 1944, recognizing excellence in both American and international film and television. Beginning in 2022, there are 105 members of ...

nomination for Best Foreign Film. The production design and costume design are by Wertmüller's husband, Enrico Job.

Plot

The

picaresque The picaresque novel ( Spanish: ''picaresca'', from ''pícaro'', for "rogue" or "rascal") is a genre of prose fiction. It depicts the adventures of a roguish, but "appealing hero", usually of low social class, who lives by his wits in a corru ...

story follows its protagonist, Pasqualino (Giannini), a dandy and small-time hood in Naples in Fascist and World War II-era Italy. To defend his family's honor, Pasqualino kills a pimp who had turned his sister into a prostitute. To dispose of the victim's body, he dismembers it and places the parts in suitcases. Caught by the police, he confesses to the murder, but successfully pleads insanity and is sentenced to 12 years in a psychiatric ward. Desperate to get out, he volunteers for the

Italian Army "The safeguard of the republic shall be the supreme law" , colors = , colors_labels = , march = ''Parata d'Eroi'' ("Heroes's parade") by Francesco Pellegrino, ''4 Maggio'' (May 4) ...

. With an Italian comrade, he eventually deserts the army, but they are captured and sent to a German

concentration camp Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simpl ...

. Pasqualino attempts to survive the camp by providing sexual favors to the female commandant (Stoler). His plan succeeds, but the commandant puts Pasqualino in charge of his

barracks Barracks are usually a group of long buildings built to house military personnel or laborers. The English word originates from the 17th century via French and Italian from an old Spanish word "barraca" ("soldier's tent"), but today barracks are u ...

as a kapo. He is told he must select six men from his barracks to be killed to prevent all from being killed. Pasqualino ends up executing his former Army comrade, and is responsible for the death of another fellow prisoner, a Spanish

anarchist Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is skeptical of all justifications for authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including, though not necessar ...

. At the war's end, upon his return to

Naples Naples (; it, Napoli ; nap, Napule ), from grc, Νεάπολις, Neápolis, lit=new city. is the regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 909,048 within the city's adm ...

, Pasqualino discovers that his seven sisters, his fiancée, and even his mother have all survived by becoming prostitutes. Unfazed, he insists on marrying his fiancée as soon as possible.

Cast

as Pasqualino Frafuso, a.k.a. Settebellezze *

as Pedro, the anarchist prisoner *

as the prison camp commandant * Elena Fiore as Concettina, a sister * Piero Di Iorio as Francesco, Pasqualino's comrade * Enzo Vitale as Don Raffaele *

Roberto Herlitzka Roberto Herlitzka (born 2 October 1937) is an Italian theatre and film actor of Czechoslovak descent. He has appeared in 38 films since 1973. He was born in Turin, Piedmont, Italy. In 2004 he won the David di Donatello for Best Supporting Actor ...

as socialist *

Lucio Amelio Lucio Amelio (13 September 1931 – 2 July 1994) was an Italian art dealer, curator, and actor. For decades he contributed to make Naples an international art centre encouraging the dialogue between European and American contemporary arts. Bio ...

as lawyer * Ermelinda De Felice as Pasqualino's mother * Bianca D'Origlia as the psychiatrist * Francesca Marciano as Carolina * Mario Conti as Totonno "18 Carati", Concettina's pimp

Production

Casting

Giannini starred in three other films Wertmüller made during this period: '' The Seduction of Mimi'' (1972), '' Love and Anarchy'' (1973), and '' Swept Away'' (1974).

Filming locations

''Seven Beauties'' was filmed on location in

, Campania, Italy.

Opening sequence

In the opening sequence of ''Seven Beauties'', spoken over

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

archival footage showing the destruction of cities and men, Wertmüller defines the object of her critique—a "particular petty bourgeois social type".

Critical response

The film's subject is survival. At the time of its release, it was controversial for its graphic depiction of

Nazi concentration camps From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps, (officially) or (more commonly). The Nazi concentration camps are distinguished from other types of Nazi camps such as forced-labor camps, as well as con ...

. In his 1976 essay "Surviving",

Bruno Bettelheim Bruno Bettelheim (August 28, 1903 – March 13, 1990) was an Austrian-born psychologist, scholar, public intellectual and writer who spent most of his academic and clinical career in the United States. An early writer on autism, Bettelheim's wor ...

, while admiring the film's artistry, severely criticized its depiction of the experience of concentration camp survivors. Bettelheim's own views about concentration camps have likewise been critiqued. On

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wan ...

, the film has an approval rating of 68% based reviews from 19 critics. In April 2019, a restored version of the film was selected to be shown in the Cannes Classics section at the

2019 Cannes Film Festival The 72nd annual Cannes Film Festival took place from 14 to 25 May 2019. Mexican filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu served as jury president. The Palme d'Or went to the South Korean film '' Parasite'', directed by Bong Joon-ho; Bong became ...

Awards and nominations

References

;Notes ;Citations ;Bibliography * * *

External links

* * * {{Lina Wertmüller 1975 films 1975 comedy-drama films Italian comedy-drama films 1970s Italian-language films Italian World War II films Holocaust films Films directed by Lina Wertmüller Films set in psychiatric hospitals Survival films 1970s Italian films