# Seven Beauties
**Seven Beauties** (*Pasqualino Settebellezze*) is a 1975 Italian comedy-drama directed and written by Lina Wertmüller, starring [Giancarlo Giannini](https://www.edgepedia.org/giancarlo-giannini) as Pasqualino Frafuso, a small-time Neapolitan hoodlum who survives Fascist Italy, the Russian front, and a Nazi concentration camp by abandoning every scruple.[1](https://cineuropa.org/en/film/414791/) • [2](https://www.torinofilmfest.org/en/42-torino-film-festival/film/pasqualino-settebellezze/57042/) At the [49th Academy Awards](https://www.edgepedia.org/49th-academy-awards) it received four nominations, and Wertmüller became the first woman ever nominated for the [Academy Award for Best Director](https://www.edgepedia.org/academy-award-for-best-director).[3](https://www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/1977) • [4](https://agoodmovietowatch.com/projektor/seven-beauties-review/)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Original title | *Pasqualino Settebellezze*; Italian release 20 December 1975, distributed by Medusa[1](https://cineuropa.org/en/film/414791/) • [5](https://www.archiviodelcinemaitaliano.it/index.php/scheda.html?codice=AG3987) |
| Director and writer | Lina Wertmüller (1928–2021), who also wrote the screenplay[1](https://cineuropa.org/en/film/414791/) |
| Running time | 116 minutes[1](https://cineuropa.org/en/film/414791/) |
| Lead cast | Giancarlo Giannini (Pasqualino), Shirley Stoler (the camp commandant), Fernando Rey (Pedro the anarchist)[6](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075040/) |
| Key crew | Cinematography Tonino Delli Colli; editing Franco Fraticelli; music Enzo Jannacci; art direction and costumes Enrico Job[5](https://www.archiviodelcinemaitaliano.it/index.php/scheda.html?codice=AG3987) |
| Oscar nominations | Four at the 49th Academy Awards: Best Actor, Best Director, Original Screenplay, Best Foreign Language Film[3](https://www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/1977) |
| Historic first | Wertmüller was the first woman nominated for Best Director and remained the only one until Jane Campion in 1994 for *The Piano*[4](https://agoodmovietowatch.com/projektor/seven-beauties-review/) |
## Spoilers
### Plot
The story is set in Naples in the 1930s. Pasqualino, the only man in a family of a father, a mother, and seven ugly, obese sisters, is nicknamed "Settebellezze" ("Seven Beauties") in ironic allusion to them.[2](https://www.torinofilmfest.org/en/42-torino-film-festival/film/pasqualino-settebellezze/57042/) Obsessed with a macho notion of family honor, he kills the pimp who got one of his sisters pregnant, almost by accident, and pleads insanity at trial.[2](https://www.torinofilmfest.org/en/42-torino-film-festival/film/pasqualino-settebellezze/57042/) • [7](https://miff.com.au/festival-archive/films/18752/seven-beauties) He is sentenced to a psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane and released when war breaks out, serving first in Russia and then deserting after his train is bombed.[2](https://www.torinofilmfest.org/en/42-torino-film-festival/film/pasqualino-settebellezze/57042/) • [8](https://www.italo-cinema.de/item/sieben-schoenheiten)
Wandering Germany with a fellow soldier, Francesco, he witnesses a mass execution of villagers by the Nazis before both are captured and sent to a concentration camp.[8](https://www.italo-cinema.de/item/sieben-schoenheiten) There Pasqualino vows to survive at any cost: he seduces the female camp commandant (Shirley Stoler), is rewarded with the position of kapo, or barracks foreman, and when Francesco goes berserk in the assembly area, Pasqualino shoots his friend dead as his duties require.[9](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/features/beauties-beast-lina-wertmullers-seven-beauties-martin-scorseses-taxi-driver) • [10](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1976/08/02/surviving) He survives the war and returns to Naples, where he finds his mother and sisters have supported themselves through prostitution, and he lays plans to survive the next world catastrophe.[11](https://www.retedeglispettatori.it/film/pasqualino-settebellezze/) • [12](https://www.festival-cannes.com/en/f/pasqualino-settebellezze/)
## Themes and style
Wertmüller structures the film as two interleaved strands: the warm, amber-toned Italian flashbacks and the cold blues and slate greys of the German camp sequences, with the newsreel prologue of Fascist demonstrations, Mussolini, and wartime destruction running about four minutes under Enzo Jannacci's wryly ironic spoken lyrics.[9](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/features/beauties-beast-lina-wertmullers-seven-beauties-martin-scorseses-taxi-driver) • [13](https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/lina-wertmuller-1928-2021) The film mixes black humor, lyrical filmmaking, and scenes of near-unbearable brutality, and its target is the philosophy of survival at any cost: the ACMI catalog calls it Wertmüller's "most wickedly subversive and audacious film," exposing the perversity of class relations and the interrelation of fascism and machismo.[14](https://www.acmi.net.au/works/83119--seven-beauties-pasqualino-settebellezze/) • [11](https://www.retedeglispettatori.it/film/pasqualino-settebellezze/)
Roger Ebert, reviewing the film in 1976, wrote that what makes it unique is that Pasqualino is a fool, neither brave nor bright, an opportunist at best and a devout pawn at worst, obsessed with an honor that is "just a bad act"; he gave the film four stars and called it "one of the strangest and most intriguing of recent European films."[15](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/seven-beauties-1976) • [16](https://www.tcm.com/articles/1584808/seven-beauties) Jay Cocks in *Time* called it "a death-house comedy, brutal, audacious, liberating," praising Wertmüller's ability to make audiences laugh while questioning themselves for doing it.[17](https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0%2C33009%2C913962-1%2C00.html)
## Reception and controversy
The film was a critical sensation in the United States, where it opened with English subtitles in 1976 as one of four Wertmüller films released simultaneously in New York.[4](https://agoodmovietowatch.com/projektor/seven-beauties-review/) • [16](https://www.tcm.com/articles/1584808/seven-beauties) Reception was sharply divided. [Pauline Kael](https://www.edgepedia.org/pauline-kael) in *The New Yorker* called it "a grotesque vaudeville show" with political labels stuck on the participants, and Russell Baker also objected, while [John Simon](https://www.edgepedia.org/john-simon) called it "a masterpiece" in *New York* and *Time* and *Newsweek* printed rave reviews.[18](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/seven_beauties) • [10](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1976/08/02/surviving)
The most sustained attack came from [Bruno Bettelheim](https://www.edgepedia.org/bruno-bettelheim), a concentration-camp survivor, writing in *The New Yorker* in 1976. He argued that the macabre black comedy neutralizes the horror it shows, turning hanged prisoners and latrine deaths into a frisson that makes the comedy more effective, and that the film's popularity suggested that one generation after the [Nuremberg trials](https://www.edgepedia.org/nuremberg-trials), a justification of survivorship under Fascism had become acceptable to American audiences.[10](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1976/08/02/surviving) Later scholarship has read the film's ambivalence differently: Pasqualino is first a murderer, then a victim, then a murderer again, forced to prostitute himself for survival just as his sisters and girlfriend do, and his survivalism and familism serve Wertmüller as stereotypes of Neapolitan localism and as a political interpretation of the rise of Fascism.[19](https://psi329.cankaya.edu.tr/uploads/files/Lichtner%2C%20Fascism%20in%20Italian%20Cinema%20since%201945_%20The%20Politics%20and%20Aesthetics%20of%20Memory-Palgrave%20Macmillan%20UK%20%282013%29.pdf)
## Awards and legacy
At the 49th Academy Awards, held March 28, 1977, *Seven Beauties* was nominated for Best Actor (Giancarlo Giannini, losing to [Peter Finch](https://www.edgepedia.org/peter-finch) for *Network*), Best Director (Lina Wertmüller, losing to [John G. Avildsen](https://www.edgepedia.org/john-g-avildsen) for *Rocky*), Best Original Screenplay (losing to [Paddy Chayefsky](https://www.edgepedia.org/paddy-chayefsky) for *Network*), and Best Foreign Language Film (lost to *Black and White in Color* from Ivory Coast).[3](https://www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/1977) Wertmüller's Best Director nomination made her the first woman ever nominated in the category, and she remained the only one until Jane Campion was nominated for *The Piano* in 1994.[4](https://agoodmovietowatch.com/projektor/seven-beauties-review/) The film also received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Foreign Language Film.[20](https://arhiva.pulafilmfestival.hr/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/PFF2022-katalog.pdf)
The film was restored in 2019 by the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia-Cineteca Nazionale from the original negatives supplied by RTI-Mediaset, with the sound restored by Federico Savina, and was screened in the Cannes Classics section of the 2019 Cannes Film Festival.[12](https://www.festival-cannes.com/en/f/pasqualino-settebellezze/) • [21](https://www.cinematheque.fr/film/43991.html) On Rotten Tomatoes it holds a 65% Tomatometer from 20 critics and an 88% audience score from more than 1,000 ratings.[18](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/seven_beauties)
## References
1. [Seven Beauties (Pasqualino Settebellezze), Cineuropa](https://cineuropa.org/en/film/414791/)
2. [Pasqualino Settebellezze, Torino Film Festival](https://www.torinofilmfest.org/en/42-torino-film-festival/film/pasqualino-settebellezze/57042/)
3. [The 49th Academy Awards (1977), Oscars.org](https://www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/1977)
4. [The Enduring Filth of Seven Beauties, A Good Movie to Watch](https://agoodmovietowatch.com/projektor/seven-beauties-review/)
5. [Pasqualino Settebellezze (1975), Archivio del Cinema Italiano](https://www.archiviodelcinemaitaliano.it/index.php/scheda.html?codice=AG3987)
6. [Seven Beauties (1975), IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075040/)
7. [Seven Beauties, MIFF Film Archive](https://miff.com.au/festival-archive/films/18752/seven-beauties)
8. [Sieben Schönheiten, Italo-Cinema](https://www.italo-cinema.de/item/sieben-schoenheiten)
9. [Beauties and the beast: Seven Beauties and Taxi Driver, Sight and Sound (BFI)](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/features/beauties-beast-lina-wertmullers-seven-beauties-martin-scorseses-taxi-driver)
10. [Surviving, by Bruno Bettelheim, The New Yorker (1976)](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1976/08/02/surviving)
11. [Pasqualino Settebellezze, Rete degli Spettatori](https://www.retedeglispettatori.it/film/pasqualino-settebellezze/)
12. [Pasqualino Settebellezze (Seven Beauties), Festival de Cannes](https://www.festival-cannes.com/en/f/pasqualino-settebellezze/)
13. [Lina Wertmüller, 1928 to 2021, BFI](https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/lina-wertmuller-1928-2021)
14. [Seven beauties = Pasqualino settebellezze, ACMI collection](https://www.acmi.net.au/works/83119--seven-beauties-pasqualino-settebellezze/)
15. [Seven Beauties movie review & film summary, RogerEbert.com (1976)](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/seven-beauties-1976)
16. [Seven Beauties, Turner Classic Movies](https://www.tcm.com/articles/1584808/seven-beauties)
17. [Cinema: Charnel Knowledge, Time (1976)](https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0%2C33009%2C913962-1%2C00.html)
18. [Seven Beauties, Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/seven_beauties)
19. [Fascism in Italian Cinema since 1945, Palgrave Macmillan (2013)](https://psi329.cankaya.edu.tr/uploads/files/Lichtner%2C%20Fascism%20in%20Italian%20Cinema%20since%201945_%20The%20Politics%20and%20Aesthetics%20of%20Memory-Palgrave%20Macmillan%20UK%20%282013%29.pdf)
20. [Pula Film Festival 2022 catalog](https://arhiva.pulafilmfestival.hr/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/PFF2022-katalog.pdf)
21. [Pasqualino (Lina Wertmüller, 1975), La Cinémathèque française](https://www.cinematheque.fr/film/43991.html)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › War and historical films (individual works) › War action and adventure › War action films released through 1999 › Released 1963 to 1998*
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