User reviews

A wild, bleak extravaganza in which our Everyman learns to shed everything--even the honor that was the one thing he had--for survival. There's a near-perfect use of images--for example, the use of bright flowered dresses to signify that yet another sister has become a whore--and an equally perfect use of sound, silence, and music. A very, very dark comedy that is largely summed up in the opening sequence, a long litany of those who are to blame. I quote only a few lines: "the ones who don't enjoy themselves even when they laugh. . . the ones who should have been shot in the cradle (pow!). . . the ones who have never had a fatal accident.. . the ones who have had one. . ."

Avoid the dubbed version; it's terrible.

Lina Wertmuller had a brief moment in the spotlight back in the mid-seventies, mostly due to the impact of three of her films: "Love and Anarchy," "Swept Away," and "Seven Beauties." Although her career took a nose-dive shortly thereafter, "Seven Beauties" still stands as her best film, and also one of the best films of its era.

Giancarlo Giannini gives a compelling and hilarious performance as Pasqualino Settebellezze, an Italian hood who is sent to prison after killing his sister's lover. He fakes insanity, gets sent to an institution, escapes by joining the military, deserts, gets caught, and is put in a concentration camp. There, he seduces his grotesque female camp commander in order to survive. Giannini makes his character wholly believable, and his presence on-screen (in nearly every scene) keeps the story going from one plot twist to the next. His character has a bumbling, comic presence to him, but also a certain amount of craft and sophistication.

Wertmuller creates a story that works both as slapstick and anti-war drama. Her direction is tight and controlled, and she doesn't flinch away from depicting the brutalities of Nazism. Parts of the film may seem like forerunners of the "gross-out" gags that have populated cinema in recent years, but these moments are actually used to show how the Nazis degraded ordinary innocents and demoralized the world around them. The most interesting aspect of the story is the way Wertmuller compares Hitler's tactics to those of the underground mafia; the Nazis, in the end, come off as hypocritical for persecuting Pasqualino for his crimes.

I saw this film in the late 70's and ran the entire gambit of emotions while viewing it. I never thought I could laugh at such violence and at the hideous Nazi acts of the concentration camps and at the same time feel like heaving my guts on the theatre floor. I am going to have to track down a DVD of this movie to watch it again.

As good as Shindlers list was, I found it pale by comparison to "The seven Beauties". It is a wild ride and I can not recommend this film highly enough.

What disturbs me is that I have yet to talk to another person who has seen this movie.

And a side note: Madona should be crucified for remaking Swept Away.

Charlie

I've watched this movie dozens of times in the last thirty years and it's still a treat. I just bought the new DVD version and I'm in love with Lina again.

It's a roller-coaster ride with scenes of the grotesque against visions of sublime beauty. And, Thank You, Lina, for the courtroom scene of poignant conversation without words.

The theme of the movie is simply that we too often accept survival as an excuse to abandon honor, integrity and fundamental humanity. There is a leftist tone that may put some off but that shouldn't detract from the basic message.

The simple message is told with flawless visuals, hypnotic music and acutely fine acting.

Please enjoy this important part of cinematic history.

I would challenge any serious film lover to view this movie and not have a very strong opinion of it. My own opinion is that it's one of the best films ever made, period. The story is harrowing, the score is so haunting you'll never forget it, and you'll think about scenes from it years later. Once you viewed it, most other domestic stuff won't even make it into the ballpark with it, much less compare with it. It's a masterpiece, plain and simple. This is real film making.

Seven Beauties is a masterpiece that holds up as well now as it did 20 years ago. Pasqualino is a character whose life is shaped by a shallow, macho, code of honor. He continually swears to live his life by this code and to force the family to live up to this standard. He is broken hearted when he must abandon his "man of honor" image in order to escape hanging.

Without his standards, miserable as they were, Pasqualino survives by instinct alone. His character contrasts with the people that he meets when he is interred in a concentration camp. Most of the time he is so consumed by a his desire to live that he can't focus on or misunderstands the important things they try to tell him.

Although this sounds like a very dour movie, it is saved by the way Lina Wertmuller constructs the story. It is a non-linear narrative, with a word or phrase triggering a flash back for Pasqualino.

The music is extraordinary. The concentration camp scenes are horrifying (with Wagner opera as the musical theme) and the scenes set in Naples are sunny and beautiful but not overblown. You see the frayed edges of a poor town, although they're bathed in the mediteranean sunshine.

Pasqualino sums it up best when he says, "A rotten comedy, a lousy farce . .. called living." Lina Wertmueller made a wonderful comedy, a masterful farce . . . called Pasqualino Settebellezze.

Editing, acting, lighting, pacing, they're all very good. The mix of genres makes me wonder. That something funny if not farcical is mixed in with the tragedy of WWII doesn't sit well with me, although I know that some will say that it is the crux. The best part of the movie was perhaps the introduction, the Oh, Yeah part. The scene wherein the two deserters come upon the mass execution has a beautifully grim and nightmarishly terrifying aspect. The whole movie has something of a bad dream, not in the least because of the seemingly realistic scenes which never could have happened and the use of black and white scenes that convey a sense that we have to do with a documentary. Surely, the director is, as Ingmar Bergman said, the magician, and if so, if the audience is being set up, it's only part of the show.

I wish you could put this movie under the English title of Seven Beauties so it would be more accessible to people. This is one of the best movies ever made and more people should see it. I was in a state of awe from beginning to end. How could someone make a movie like this? It is hard for Americans to understand this kind of existence because we never have had to experience anything like it. Lina Wertmuller has made a movie about the human condition that our ancestors fought to protect us from having to face. If you want light-hearted entertainment, stay away, but if you want to see just what it took to live through the horror of war, you must see this movie.

What fails to make "Seven Beauties" the masterpiece many reviewers are alleging is the uneven tone of the film. Important moral issues are juxtaposed in grotesque and vulgar sequence. Our "hero" is fatally flawed from the beginning; he learns very little from his tribulations. Attempts at comedy feel forced and out of place. The intriguing opening montage with its wry narration sets a mood that is quickly discarded. Despite all of this, "Seven Beauties" succeeds in hammering its message thanks to several well-observed scenes featuring Shirley Stoler and Fernando Rey. But it's Giancarlo Giannini's show all the way and his performance is fearless. Don't approach this film expecting to be entertained. Come hungry for food for thought.

During WWII, Italian soldier Pasqualino Frafuso finds himself transported to where he believes to be Germany. He and another soldier desert their duties. They are captured by German soldiers and thrown into a concentration camp run by a sadistic female commandant. Before the war, he was a self-righteous minor hood who was imprisoned for killing his sister's pimp.

This is interesting. I never got pulled in by the character Pasqualino but his plight is always interesting. He's not a guy to root for but he's never boring. The concentration camp has a good amount of threatening tone. The female commandant never got that threatening for me. It may be more interesting to have a male warden which makes the private sadomasochistic activities more perverse. That may be going too far. This goes far enough for its time. This actually got four Oscar nominations.

In John Waters' 1972 comedy "Pink Flamingos", it was character Babs Johnson who, for obvious reasons, earned the title of being "The Filthiest Person Alive".

Well, here in Lina Wertmuller's 1975 comedy "7 Beauties", it was character Pasqualino who, from my perspective, easily deserved a shot at the title of "Filthiest Person Alive".

OK. Let's see - From raping a mental patient helplessly tied down to a bed, to deserting his own country in wartime and collaborating with the Nazis, to frequently abusing women, both physically & verbally, to turning his own comrades over to the Gestapo (who, in turn, assassinated them) to save his own skin - I'd definitely say that slime-bucket Pasqualino was even filthier and more immoral than was the likes of Babs Johnson.

Not only was Pasqualino one of the filthiest, most low-down buggers imaginable, but this self-righteous, hypocritical crybaby was also something of an annoying scenery-chewer, as well.

With all of the despicable behaviour that came out of this horrid Pasqualino character, I can't believe that 7 Beauties was actually billed as a comedy. I personally rank Pasqualino as one of the most sickening & repulsive characters in all of movie, make-believe history.

The only reason why I rated 7 Beauties with 4 stars was due to some of its very striking imagery and its impressive camera-work. Other than that this disappointing Lina Wertmuller production was a real "mess-terpiece", in the truest sense of the word.

I saw "Seven Beauties" when I was in college back in 1976. It immediately became my favorite film and stayed that way for 20 years. Now that I am older, I have moved it down the list a bit, but I still love it. I especially love the music and the music scenes. For 20 years I searched for a soundtrack album but never found it. Finally, my brother recommended the obvious: rent the movie and copy the music to an audio tape. The music I am thinking of is in three scenes: the opening montage with the "Oh, yeah" song (which works much better in Italian--don't bother with the dubbed version); the strolling/strutting around the town scene (music only, no lyrics, no dialogue); and the court scene (music only, no lyrics, no dialogue). Those three scenes will stay with me the rest of my life.

"Seven Beauties" has a strange rhythm that it might take some viewers a while to settle into. It reminded me at times of the 1997 film "Life Is Beautiful" in its attempt to juxtapose the darkly comic to the stark horror of Nazi work camps, but the comparison really just highlights how superior Lina Wertmuller's 1976 film is to Robert Benigni's bit of sentimental hokum in just about every conceivable way. After Benigni inflicted his movie on us, I figured trying to find humor in such terrible subject matter was just a mistake, and that anyone would fail in the attempt. But Wertmuller proves that it's possible after all, and the comedy makes the horror that much more horrifying.

Wertmuller became the first woman ever nominated for a Best Director Academy Award, and the film received additional nominations for Best Foreign Language Film, Best Actor (Giancarlo Giannini), and Best Original Screenplay. Though it didn't win anything, with a set of nominations like that one assumes it had to be close to making the cut in the Best Picture race that year (1976), a year that saw "Rocky" ultimately win the top prize. How's that for cinematic schizophrenia?

Grade: A+

After deserting from the Italian Army, small-time Neapolitan hood Pasqualino 'Seven Beauties' Frafuso is captured by the Germans and sent to a harsh prison camp run by a sadistic female commandant (Shirley Stoler) where he discovers just how low he'll sink to stay alive. The film is an intriguing blend of comedy and brutality as Pasqualino relives (through flashbacks) the events that brought him to the camp (including the murder of his homely sister's pimp and his awkward attempts to dispose of the body). Survival is the underlying theme, as Pasqualino, a small, unprepossessing man, postures and struts to maintain his place in the Naples underworld, then has to find food and shelter when on the run from the Germans (the scene of him chattering to a bemused elderly German woman while stuffing his face on stolen food is priceless), and finally decides that seducing the corpulent commandant is the only way to survive the camp. Throughout the film, the imagery is outstanding, sometimes colourful and bizarre (but not as grotesque as Fellini), other times monochrome and almost painful to look at. The film will not be to everyone's taste but I very much enjoyed it.

Giancarlo Giannini is a minor Neapolitan hood, a snappy dresser, attractive to all the woman, and the sort of idiot who believes what he's told. He shoots another hoodlum for turning his sister into a prostitute, and then refuses to lie in court because of his honor. He adores il Duce until he he talks with a socialist; he winds up in a German concentration camp, where he seduces gross Shirley Stoler to survives. Even though he's a fool, though, he does learn eventually that it's not honor or beauty or a gun or country that will save and protect him: it's strength.

Lina Wertmuller's movie is probably the peak of her international fame. This garnered two Oscar nominations, including signora Wertmuller as director and Giannini as actor, and well deserved they are. Wertmuller casts her cynical, observing eye on her subject, and makes the audience see clearly. There are gross, distorted, fragmented images of sexuality throughout this movie, like the end of CABARET which will repel the viewer. It's a carefully balanced movie that stubbornly refuses to play anything for comedy, because that's not Wertmuller's aim: she shatters every illusion.

Never before and never after Pasqualino Settebellezze, Lina Wertmuller regained her explosive ability to depict human misery. It's her best work and the best example of her dualistic thematic stories always centered on conflicting aspects of gender and politics. Her creation of the Nazi bitch surpasses all expectations about her anti feminism. A Gem!

I am truly pleased to read all these positive comments about this movie. Even though the total comments are rather few in number they are all positive, which in itself is remarkable. I saw it when it first came to the theater and have loved it ever since. The movie hit on all cylinders for me in a way that probably no movie before or since could do. (Kazan's EAST OF EDEN comes close.) This is not an easy movie to like in that it is a Totally Focused Character Study about an individual who we meet for the first time in the movie. It is not a simple Genre movie that focuses on one aspect of life (crime, war, anti-war, comedy, romance, tragedy, coming of age, sex, survival etc.). This is a one-of-a-kind Character Study that asks you to follow the life of a human being (combining all aspects of life) as it unfolds before our eyes. And as there is justification for each of his sins (and they are legion) we cannot judge him too harshly, or at all. Also, because we initially like the character we become complicit in each one of his monstrous deeds and soon there is no turning back for either him or us. We can only continue going forward together, if only to see how it all ends. Oh Yeah. Perhaps that is what the OH YEAH Beat poem at the beginning is all about. That is the final irony- how the start of the movie and the end become one. At the end of the movie (or the true beginning of his life) Pasqualino becomes the person being mocked in the Oh Yeah poem of the opening scene. I think the reason everyone seems to like this movie is that the people who would not like or understand it knew instinctively within themselves to simply stay away. Or they walked out on it as soon as they realized this was not their kind of (genre) movie. Historical Note- I heard on the History Channel on a program about Naples during WWII that fully 30 percent of the women of Naples were prostitutes during the war. ed

With "Pasqualino Settebellezze" (called "Seven Beauties" in English), Lina Wertmuller directed what may have been her greatest movie ever. Giancarlo Giannini plays Pasqualino Frafuso, who fancies himself the coolest guy in town in 1930s Italy. Through a series of crazy events, he ends up in jail. Since it's the era of Mussolini, most of the people behind bars are political prisoners. Then, he gets sent off to fight in the war. Captured by the Nazis, he stays alive by having an affair with the cruel Nazi woman who runs the camp.

This is a movie that will leave you laughing because of the mishaps that land Pasqualino in jail, but also shaken because of what he sees in the war. It is a hilarious and disturbing masterpiece.