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Seven Beauties
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Wikipedia article
'Seven Beauties' (, "Pasqualino Sevenbeauties") is a 1975 Italian language film written and directed by Lina Wertmller and starring Giancarlo Giannini, Fernando Rey, and Shirley Stoler.
Written by Wertmller, the film is about an Italian everyman who deserts the army during World War II and is then captured by the Germans and sent to a prison camp, where he does anything to survive. Through flashbacks, we learn about his family of seven unattractive sisters, his accidental murder of one sister's lover, his imprisonment in an insane asylumwhere he rapes a patientand his volunteering to be a soldier to escape confinement.
For her work on the film, Wertmller became the first woman nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director, a feat not matched again until 1993, when New Zealand filmmaker Jane Campion was nominated for 'The Piano'. The film received three other Academy Award nominations, including one for Best Foreign Language Film. It also received one Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Foreign Film.
The production design and costume design were by the director's husband, Enrico Job.
Plot
The picaresque story follows its protagonist, Pasqualino (Giannini), a dandy and small-time hood in Naples in Fascist and World War II Italy.
To save the family honour, 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 is convicted and sent to prison.
Pasqualino succeeds in getting himself transferred to a psychiatric ward but, desperate to get out, he volunteers for the Italian Army, which is allied with the German army. With an Italian comrade, he eventually deserts the army, but they are captured and sent to a German concentration camp.
In a bid to save his own life, Pasqualino decides to survive the camp by providing sexual favors to the obese and ugly female commandant (Stoler). His plan succeeds, but the commandant puts Pasqualino in charge of a barracks as a kapo. Here he must select six men to be killed to prevent all from being killed. Pasqualino ends up executing his former Army comrade, and he is responsible for the death of another fellow prisoner, a Spanish anarchist.
At the war's end, upon his return to Naples, Pasqualino discovers that his seven sisters, his fiance, and even his mother have all survived by becoming prostitutes.
Cast
* Giancarlo Giannini as Pasqualino Frafuso aka Settebellezze
* Fernando Rey as Pedro (the anarchist prisoner)
* Shirley Stoler 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 as Socialist
* Lucio Amelio 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
Giancarlo Giannini starred in three other films Wertmller 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 Naples, Campania, Italy.Opening sequence
In the opening sequence of 'Seven Beauties', spoken over World War II archival footage showing the destruction of cities and men, Wertmller defines the object of her critiquea "particular petty bourgeois social type".Critical response
The subject of the film is survival. At the time of its release, it was controversial for its graphic depiction of Nazi concentration camps. In his 1976 essay "Surviving", Bruno Bettelheim, while admiring the film's artistry, severely criticized its impression of the experience of concentration camp survivors.Bettelheim, Bruno. 'Surviving and Other Essays'. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979. Bettelheim's own views about concentration camps have likewise been critiqued.
On Rotten Tomatoes, 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.
Awards and nominations
See also
* List of submissions to the 49th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film
* List of Italian submissions for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
* List of Italian films of 1975
* 'The Seven Beauties': A medieval Iranian romance poem about the foreign escapades of the pre-Islamic Persian ruler, Bayram Gur. Framed in pleasantries in seven pavilions modelled on seven climes controlled by the seven planets followed by various sufferings, grievances and injustices encountered in seven of his subjects.
References
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