Lina Wertmüller's film Seven Beauties or as it is known in the original Italian , Pasqualino Settebelleze, made the history as the very first full-length feature film, for which a female director was nominated by the Academy for Best Directing. The movie is 35 years old, but is so beautifully and creatively made, and mixes horrifying, ugly, funny and touching so perfectly that it has not become outdated and it won't be even after 100 or more years. Wertmüller made the film that both Tarantino with Inglorious Basterds and Roberto Benigni with Life is Beautiful could only dream about. I've seen thousands of movies but I can count on one hand these that made me cry, laugh, terrified and amused at the same time. Seven Beauties is one of them. In Seven Beauties, grim and shocking scenes of war and survival in a concentration camp are intermixed with memories of the protagonist, Pasqualino, nicknamed "Seven Beauties" of the pre-war Naples, about his life as a petty thief, pimp, and a wannabe Mafioso, and a guardian of his seven ugly as hell sisters' family honor. That's where the irony of the film's title comes from. I must say that for a film with such an abundance of beautiful women in the title, Lina Wertmüller surpassed Federico Fellini who was just as mesmerized with the ugliness as he was with beauty, and often inhabited his films with the grotesque figures. I guess Wertmuller learned a lot from Fellini whom she met through Marcello Mastroianni and worked as an assistant on the set of 8 1/2 in 1962. I also think that only a woman can highlight inadequacies and unattractiveness of the other women so eloquently in Wertmüller's film. The film's protagonist, Pasqualino - weak, silly, but full of self-importance as the only male in the big family responsible for the sisters and their mother, and is ready to stand up for their dignity and honor (as he understood it) at any cost. That includes the killing rather by accident of a man who made a prostitute of Pasqualino's sister... and disposal of the corpse ( here the movie turns into a horror, mixed with the moments so funny that I could not look at the screen and turn off it at the same time. After the fast solving of messy crime and trial, Pasqualino was found mentally incompetent and sent to a psychiatric hospital for 12 years. But Italy needs soldiers, and Pasqualino escapes from a mental hospital, gets to the front, deserts, and ends up a prisoner of war in the concentration camp in Germany which is run by a formidable petrifying never parting with her whip larger than life woman-commandant. Pasqualino had two true talents - success with the ladies and an amazing ability to survive. Would they help him to survive the nightmares of concentration camp and return home to sunny Naples to his mother and seven beauties?
The movie is in my opinion a masterwork. Scenes from past and present are connected smoothly and flawlessly. Wertmüller effectively uses close-ups. The script, which she also wrote - is a beauty itself. It is original, witty, gloomy, but not pessimistic, it is a political satire and it pokes on the traditional Italian machismo, it does not shy away from the tragedy of war and the price of survival. And finally, this is certainly Lina Wertmüller's movie, but she shares the success with her Muse or Musus:), Giancarlo Giannini . Giannini starred in four Lina Wertmüller's films, but Pasqualino Settebelleze, a small man with a great opinion of himself and seven ugly sisters - is his masterpiece. This is a must see.
The movie is in my opinion a masterwork. Scenes from past and present are connected smoothly and flawlessly. Wertmüller effectively uses close-ups. The script, which she also wrote - is a beauty itself. It is original, witty, gloomy, but not pessimistic, it is a political satire and it pokes on the traditional Italian machismo, it does not shy away from the tragedy of war and the price of survival. And finally, this is certainly Lina Wertmüller's movie, but she shares the success with her Muse or Musus:), Giancarlo Giannini . Giannini starred in four Lina Wertmüller's films, but Pasqualino Settebelleze, a small man with a great opinion of himself and seven ugly sisters - is his masterpiece. This is a must see.