''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 85 m ...
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 film, art house films ''Sev ...
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 t ...
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 corrup ...
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 simply ...
.
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
A kapo or prisoner functionary (german: Funktionshäftling) was a prisoner in a Nazi camp who was assigned by the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) guards to supervise forced labor or carry out administrative tasks.
Also called "prisoner self-administrat ...
. 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 neces ...
.
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 adminis ...
, 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
*
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' ...
as Pasqualino Frafuso, a.k.a. Settebellezze
*
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 ...
as Pedro, the anarchist prisoner
*
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 ...
as the prison camp commandant
*
Elena Fiore
Elena Fiore (26 July 1928 – September 26, 1999) was an Italian film actress, best known for her roles in Lina Wertmüller films.
Born in Naples, Fiore debuted in 1972 in the role Amalia Finocchiaro, an overweight, middle-aged woman full of sexu ...
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
''The Seduction of Mimi'' ( it, Mimì metallurgico ferito nell'onore, lit=Mimi the Metalworker, Wounded in Honor) is a 1972 Italian comedy-drama film written and directed by Lina Wertmüller, starring Giancarlo Giannini as Mimi and featuring Mar ...
'' (1972), ''
Love and Anarchy
''Love and Anarchy'' ( it, Film d'amore e d'anarchia, ovvero: stamattina alle 10, in via dei Fiori, nella nota casa di tolleranza..., lit=Film of love and anarchy, or rather: this morning at 10, in via dei Fiori, in the well-known brothel ...) i ...
'' (1973), and ''
Swept Away'' (1974).
Filming locations
''Seven Beauties'' was filmed on location in
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 adminis ...
, 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 vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
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 concen ...
. 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 wo ...
, 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 Wang ...
, 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 t ...
.
Awards and nominations
See also
*
*
*
List of Italian films of 1975
A list of films produced in Italy in 1975 (see 1975 in film):
Footnotes
References
*
*
*
*
External linksItalian films of 1975at the Internet Movie Database
{{DEFAULTSORT:Italian Films Of 1975
1975
Films
A film al ...
* ''
The Seven Beauties
''Haft Peykar'' ( fa, هفت پیکر ''Haft Peykar'') also known as Bahramnameh (, ''The Book of Bahram'', referring to the Sasanian king Bahram Gur) is a romantic epic by Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi written in 1197. This poem forms one part of ...
'': A medieval Iranian romance poem about the foreign escapades of the pre-Islamic Persian ruler, Bayram Gur. Framed in pleasantries in seven pavilions modeled on seven climes controlled by the seven planets followed by various sufferings, grievances and injustices encountered in seven of his subjects.
References
;Notes
;Citations
;Bibliography
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*
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