SnoReptilePlenty Memorable, crazy movie

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Verity Robins Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Josephina Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Dalbert Pringle 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.

pontifikator Lina Wertmuller wrote and directed this motion picture, which was released in 1975. It stars Giancarlo Gianinni as the title character, Shirley Stoler, Fernando Rey, and a host of excellent supporting actresses and actors. The film got Wertmuller the first nomination of a woman as Best Director for the Oscars. Her use of music and silence is brilliant."Seven Beauties" starts with our hero on the lam in Germany, an Italian soldier trying to desert to his home in Napoli. In flashbacks throughout the film, we see episodes of Pasqualino Seven Beauties before the war as a young man with aspirations to the Mob. Through a series of misadventures involving murder and an insane asylum, Pasqualino ends up in the Italian army in Germany, where he promptly deserts. The Germans capture him and send him to a concentration camp. Throughout the film, in flashbacks and in the present, Pasqualino's goal is to live. And he gets his wish. Naturally, much goes on in the years between the Thirties and the Forties, when the film ends. Wertmuller is relentless in her hatred of the Nazis and the Fascists. There is enough polemic in the film to get her point across, but not so didactically that it becomes preachy. Some of the characters clearly have no point but to show the intelligence of socialism or the bravery of honor. But what Pasqualino has to show us is the squalor and degradation of the Nazis.If the purpose of good literature is to show us the development of character, Wertmuller shows it in spades through Pasqualino and his family. The price of staying alive is high.SPOILERS In a flashback the movie shows us Pasqualino, his mother, and his sisters during the Depression before World War II. They live in Napoli, and his mother is widowed, so Pasqualino assumes that the's head of the family. Although they are poor, Pasqualino is very happy. He dresses well, he carries a gun, and he feels respected. His oldest sister, however, is 38, and she feels spinsterhood approaching. She's fat and ugly and has no prospects. She falls for a pimp who tells her he'll make her a star and then he'll marry her. Her goal in life is to feel loved, she falls for his line, and he puts her on stage in a skimpy costume then into a brothel. Prostitution is a metaphor throughout Wertmuller's movie. Pasqualino murders the pimp, disposes of the body, is caught and confesses. Told by his lawyer that his only chance to avoid the death penalty is to plead insanity, Pasqualino refuses, claiming the family's honor is more important. Awaiting trial, however, Pasqualino realizes that life is better than an honorable death, and he begins spouting Il Duce's speeches to his fellow inmates. His lawyer gets him sentenced to treatment in an asylum. Staying alive, too, is a repeating theme in "Seven Beauties." Wertmuller realized that one of the genius ideas of the Nazis was to make us all complicit in their atrocities. Throughout the movie, Pasqualino observes atrocities and remains silent over the objections of others around him. Eventually his silent acquiescence leads to action, as he becomes a participant in the murders of those imprisoned with him. While others choose honorable death, Pasqualino chooses to remain alive. It's not a bargain with the devil. It's not a choice we can blame on others. It's the choice of Pasqualino. To live, he has to prostitute himself to the Nazi camp commandant. "Seven Beauties" is an indictment of the Nazis and all their fellow travelers, but an understanding one. Sergei Eisenstein showed us in "Battleship Potemkin" that the drama lies in individual stories not in masses, and Wertmuller shows us the corruption of all of Germany through the individual story of Pasqualino. The Nazi path is a 12-step program which leads not to recovery and redemption but to the sickness that was the Nazi party. Blind obedience to the Nazis leads to hell. Pasqualino's wish to live was granted, and the Furies will hound him with the living hell of his memories.After you've seen "Seven Beauties," watch "Catch 22" and pay attention to Yossarian's conversation with the old Italian man.For serious students, I recommend reading a short article about Mel Brooks at the US News archives where Brooks says you can't take on monsters like Hitler in a direct manner -- they'll always win if you take them seriously and argue their behavior with them. Hitler was famous for seducing his listeners with his rhetoric. Brooks believes the only way to win against tyrants is to mock them and show how crazy they are. Brooks says he attacks the horror of the holocaust with the only weapon that works - ridicule of the perpetrators. Was Wertmuller mocking the Nazis with "Seven Beauties"?Then contrast Brooks's view with that of Bruno Bettelheim in his essay about "Seven Beauties" called "Surviving." Brooks served in the army in World War II and saw the streams of refugees but not the concentration camps. Bettelheim is, as he put it, one of the all too few survivors of the camps. Bettelheim's view of the film and its comic aspects is one of outrage and disgust. Actually, I'm not sure outrage is strong enough to describe his feeling. He excoriates Wertmuller and everyone who gave the film a good review. I contemplated a meaningful dialogue between Mel Brooks and Bettelheim, but I'm not sure it could have happened, given Bettelheim's experience. He was a professor of psychology at the University of Chicago after his escape to America, and he practiced at a school for emotionally disturbed children. Bettelheim's specialty was treatment of the autistic. Unsurprisingly, he suffered from depression. In 1990 at the age of 86 he committed suicide - he was widowed and suffering from the effects of a major stroke.

Galina 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.

Lee Eisenberg 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.