"Seven Beauties" opens with a strange sequence. Over horrific WW2 documentary footage, a character called Pasqualino Settebellezze recites a monologue, pausing every now and then to say "oh yeah" in a rather kinky voice, whilst overly romantic jazz music more suited to a low budget porn movie plays bombastically in the background.
Sex, violence and self-preservation, these are the themes this introductory sequence lays down, all of which director Lina Wertmuller will approach from various angles over the next hour and a half.
The film then unfolds in non-linear fashion. We see Pasqualino and his companion bumbling through a forest. Having long deserted the Italian army, they are tired and dirty, desperate for a meal. It is then that the pair witness a massacre, the German army rounding up a crowd of Jews, ordering them to get naked and then mercilessly gunning them down. The two men then have a short debate. Was it their moral imperative to intervene? Would their intervention have been useless? Is running away morally reprehensible?
As the film progresses, director Lina Wertmuller increasingly argues that running away is merely a form of prostitution, the survivor selling his/her humanity for survival. Self-interest, she says, is both human nature and a form of exploitation. Paradoxically, it is this self-interest – the need to survive – which causes atrocities and enables bloodshed to continue. Those who run, in other words, support the war machine. Are complicit in its smooth efficiency.
The film then jumps back in time. Pasqualino is re-introduced to us a dashing and debonair playboy who has a gift for seducing ladies. He wears a flashy suit, is always well groomed and struts about like a womanising Don Juan. But of course Pasqualino is a fraud, always showing off in an attempt to hide his own poverty. To him, appearances are everything. As such, Pasqualino is obsessed with protecting his seven ugly sisters (the seven beauties of the title), who are so desperate for money that they whore themselves out as strippers and prostitutes. Pasqualino deplores their behaviour. How dare they dishonour the family name! How dare they take part in such filth!
This section of the film is thus a sort of darkly comic, domestic fairytale, the younger brother defending his older, quite unattractive sisters, against the onslaught of disrespect posed by everybody in the village. But once Pasqualino pulls a gun on a local pimp (for insulting his sister), the film shifts gears and becomes a dark tale of survival. Pasqualino goes on the run from the law, chops a body into little pieces and engages in all manners of theft, rape and pillage, all in the name of survival. The very man who condemned others for prostituting their bodies, becomes a whore to the world, doing every despicable act required to ensure his continued existence.
The last half of the film literalizes these themes further. Pasqualino is captured and placed in a German concentration camp run by an evil female camp commandant (Shirly Stoler in the role that made her famous). Trapped in the camp and fearing for his life, Pasqualino must use his skills as a womaniser to seduce this embodiment of evil. And so, in one long sequence that is as funny as it is gross, Pasqualino flirts, seduces and makes love to the camp commander. The last shreds of his dignity are instantly evaporated.
The film ends with Pasqualino in Italy, offering his hand in marriage to a young woman. She agrees, at which point he promptly discusses the prospect of having babies. Pasqualino wants countless children. Why? Because only through them can he ensure his survival. And so, quite despicably, life has once again found a way.
Of course on another level, one can also look at Pasqualino as Italy personified, the country selling her soul to fascism in the name of personal survival.
Incidentally, with "Seven Beauties" Wertmuller also continues her trend for inserting veiled (anti?) feminist statements in her films. The piggish camp commander is a jab at the kind of man-hating "strong women" who set the agenda for female equality by demeaning and undermining others. She's no better than the patriarchal power players she despises.
8.5/10 - The Italians made the best Holocaust films. Unlike the "Allied Nations", they experienced the Holocaust's horrors first hand, participated in its evils, and possessed the right mixture of blame, introspection, anger and disgust to represent the event truthfully. The Germans, swathed with guilt, couldn't even approach the topic until a good half a century later (until recently, Holocaust movies have come out of every country BUT Nazism's country of origin). Scapegoated and demonized, international pressure coupled with their own insecurities, Germany was prevented from seeing itself as anything other than one dimensional "bad guys".
Note: This film was a huge influence on Italian filmmakers. Roberto Benigni's "Life is Beautiful" rips this picture off shamelessly whilst Coppola would base his "Ride of the Valkyries" sequence in "Apocalypse Now" on the "Ride of the Valkyries" sequence in this film. More interesting Holocaust films: "Korczak", "The Garden of Finzi Continis", "Border Street", "Diamonds of the Night", "Europa Europa", "Fateless", "The Last Stop", "The New Land", "Passenger", "The Pianist", "The Pawnbroker", "The Wannsee Conference", "The Shop On Main Street", "The Boat is Full".
Sex, violence and self-preservation, these are the themes this introductory sequence lays down, all of which director Lina Wertmuller will approach from various angles over the next hour and a half.
The film then unfolds in non-linear fashion. We see Pasqualino and his companion bumbling through a forest. Having long deserted the Italian army, they are tired and dirty, desperate for a meal. It is then that the pair witness a massacre, the German army rounding up a crowd of Jews, ordering them to get naked and then mercilessly gunning them down. The two men then have a short debate. Was it their moral imperative to intervene? Would their intervention have been useless? Is running away morally reprehensible?
As the film progresses, director Lina Wertmuller increasingly argues that running away is merely a form of prostitution, the survivor selling his/her humanity for survival. Self-interest, she says, is both human nature and a form of exploitation. Paradoxically, it is this self-interest – the need to survive – which causes atrocities and enables bloodshed to continue. Those who run, in other words, support the war machine. Are complicit in its smooth efficiency.
The film then jumps back in time. Pasqualino is re-introduced to us a dashing and debonair playboy who has a gift for seducing ladies. He wears a flashy suit, is always well groomed and struts about like a womanising Don Juan. But of course Pasqualino is a fraud, always showing off in an attempt to hide his own poverty. To him, appearances are everything. As such, Pasqualino is obsessed with protecting his seven ugly sisters (the seven beauties of the title), who are so desperate for money that they whore themselves out as strippers and prostitutes. Pasqualino deplores their behaviour. How dare they dishonour the family name! How dare they take part in such filth!
This section of the film is thus a sort of darkly comic, domestic fairytale, the younger brother defending his older, quite unattractive sisters, against the onslaught of disrespect posed by everybody in the village. But once Pasqualino pulls a gun on a local pimp (for insulting his sister), the film shifts gears and becomes a dark tale of survival. Pasqualino goes on the run from the law, chops a body into little pieces and engages in all manners of theft, rape and pillage, all in the name of survival. The very man who condemned others for prostituting their bodies, becomes a whore to the world, doing every despicable act required to ensure his continued existence.
The last half of the film literalizes these themes further. Pasqualino is captured and placed in a German concentration camp run by an evil female camp commandant (Shirly Stoler in the role that made her famous). Trapped in the camp and fearing for his life, Pasqualino must use his skills as a womaniser to seduce this embodiment of evil. And so, in one long sequence that is as funny as it is gross, Pasqualino flirts, seduces and makes love to the camp commander. The last shreds of his dignity are instantly evaporated.
The film ends with Pasqualino in Italy, offering his hand in marriage to a young woman. She agrees, at which point he promptly discusses the prospect of having babies. Pasqualino wants countless children. Why? Because only through them can he ensure his survival. And so, quite despicably, life has once again found a way.
Of course on another level, one can also look at Pasqualino as Italy personified, the country selling her soul to fascism in the name of personal survival.
Incidentally, with "Seven Beauties" Wertmuller also continues her trend for inserting veiled (anti?) feminist statements in her films. The piggish camp commander is a jab at the kind of man-hating "strong women" who set the agenda for female equality by demeaning and undermining others. She's no better than the patriarchal power players she despises.
8.5/10 - The Italians made the best Holocaust films. Unlike the "Allied Nations", they experienced the Holocaust's horrors first hand, participated in its evils, and possessed the right mixture of blame, introspection, anger and disgust to represent the event truthfully. The Germans, swathed with guilt, couldn't even approach the topic until a good half a century later (until recently, Holocaust movies have come out of every country BUT Nazism's country of origin). Scapegoated and demonized, international pressure coupled with their own insecurities, Germany was prevented from seeing itself as anything other than one dimensional "bad guys".
Note: This film was a huge influence on Italian filmmakers. Roberto Benigni's "Life is Beautiful" rips this picture off shamelessly whilst Coppola would base his "Ride of the Valkyries" sequence in "Apocalypse Now" on the "Ride of the Valkyries" sequence in this film. More interesting Holocaust films: "Korczak", "The Garden of Finzi Continis", "Border Street", "Diamonds of the Night", "Europa Europa", "Fateless", "The Last Stop", "The New Land", "Passenger", "The Pianist", "The Pawnbroker", "The Wannsee Conference", "The Shop On Main Street", "The Boat is Full".