MamaGravity good back-story, and good acting

ClassyWas Excellent, smart action film.

KnotStronger This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Humaira Grant It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

jonathanruano Director Lina Wertmueller's "Seven Beauties" feels like a never-ending roller coaster as the cowardly anti-hero Pasqualino Frasfuso (played very well by Giancarlo Giannini) blunders into one bad situation after the other from the the 1930s to the end of the Second World War. Alternating from uproariously funny to deadly serious, this film uses Giannini's life to convey a very cynical message about life and the world. Wertmueller happily subjects Giannini's character to one humiliation after the other in order to make this large point: namely, that Pasqualino survives these misadventures (including a prolonged stay in a concentration camp) not because of his heroic or noble qualities (he has none), but rather because he is weak, cowardly, and selfish. Admittedly, this message may strike viewers as very depressing. Yet, Wertmueller's "Seven Beauties" makes for great entertainment anyway precisely because it is an unconventional, fast-paced, colourful, loud, musical, stereotypical, and action-packed picture where the unexpected often happens and catches you unawares.

tieman64 "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".

Eumenides_0 Lina Wertmüller's cinema remained unknown to me until I watched Pasqualino Settebellezze, but now I can say she has made one of the finest movies I've ever seen. She's succeeded in creating an unforgettable character, Pasqualino, a lovable rogue, and give one of the most cynical and funniest looks at human nature and at Man's will to survive.Giancarlo Giannini plays Pasqualino, a Neapolitan crook who wants to make a name for himself and protect the honour of his household composed of his mother and several sisters. When one of his sisters becomes a prostitute he kills her pimp and disposes of the body in a creative way: by hacking it into three pieces and shipping each one to a different city. The inexperience Pasqualino is caught, but the "Monster of Naples" fakes madness and gets sent to an asylum. Then with WWII starting, he manages to get recruited just so he can desert. Only he deserts in the middle of Germany and gets taken to a concentration camp where he seduces the sadistic Kapo in return for favours.This movie is undoubtedly a comedy, the black, misanthropic type that revels in making fun of everything that's rotten and horrible in people. Pasqualino's will to live to would bring to one's mind movies like The Pianist or Life Is Beautiful, hymns to human hope, if it weren't for the fact Pasqualino is a manipulative bastard who'll do anything – really anything – to survive. In a way this movie is also a parody of such feel-good movies. Wertmüller peels down the layers of the hero to show that behind all that willpower, all that nobility there's just a rat trying to survive.Like the Nazi Kapo says to Pasqualino, "You're a sub-human creature who'll survive, while we tried to create the master race and are doomed". And yet Giannini, who gives a marvellous performance, never makes his character unlikable. From the first time we see him wearing a dead man's bloodied bandages to fake a wound, to strutting through the streets of Naples like a peacock, to debasing himself before the Kapo in return for food, we're captivated by his performance.If you ever need to remind yourself what a sad, pathetic species we are, watch Pasqualino Settebellezze and marvel how all the lies that hide our true nature are torn apart to reveal our true spirit.

MartinHafer There have been many movie made on the subject of the Holocaust or the Jewish ghettos and this one is certainly unique. The ones that I find the most watchable are the ones that look at it from an unusual viewpoint--a way that gives us new insight into the wretchedness and evil. My favorite of these is THE SHOP ON MAINSTREET, though SEVEN BEAUTIES is also an exceptional film about the horrors of the Nazis as seen from an unusual man.Pasqualino (also called "Seven Beauties" in the film) is a slimy amoral Italian man who is totally apolitical and only wants to survive the war. His life, up until the war, is shown in a series of flashbacks. And, he was a pimp who mostly avoided arrest until he killed a man. Then he manages to be sent to a mental asylum and then eventually released to the Italian army. No matter how bad his problems are, this smooth talking jerk manages to survive. However, after deserting (about you'd expect from him), Pasqualino and another deserter are captured and stuck in a hell-hole German death camp. Slimy Pasqualino figures he, too, will soon die unless he does SOMETHING to survive. His plan is to seduce the German lady officer in charge. She is, by the way, the uglies, scariest and most awful "human being" you'll ever see on film. His sex scenes with her, instead of being titillating are almost comical in their repulsiveness. However, Pasqualino gets far more than he bargains for. He DOES survive, but is made a Kapo--a boss of his barracks responsible for selecting men for execution and even performing one himself! It is a tough to watch segment of the movie--seeing just how far this "man" will go to save his own skin.The film is a great study in human nature and evil. As you would expect, this film is NOT ACCEPTABLE FARE FOR KIDS! But, for a mature audience, this is well worth your time. Giancarlo Giannini did a wonderful job in the lead.