Customer Reviews

Seven Beauties

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Finally, an excellent job by Fox-Lorber (just about time, isn't it?). The image in widescreen is sharp and the colors are right. A few forgivable scratches and artifacts here and there but excellent throughout. Can't complain about the sound (mono) which is clear anyway and I think that's how it was when it was first released in theatres. The different interactive menus have music from the film which is a delight thinking that Fox-Lorber did it. Chapter searches are few (6) and far in between but that's okay (since Fox-Lorber is known for that). The only thing missing is the booklet which the company never does anyway (I wonder why). Anyway, the film is great and deserves the treatment it got for its transfer. Fascinating treatment by Wertmuller about a war-deserter who reflects on his life before he ended up in a German concentration camp. Very funny and poignant leading to a searing ending. Images show touches of Fellini whom Wertmuller studied under, yet this movie, which resonates greatness and already a classic is entirely her own. Unforgettable!

This film is so perfectly constructed and well acted that it should be required viewing in any film school. The use of flashback allows the action to switch from extremely funny scenes set in Naples to extremely grim depictions of life in a concentration camp. Giannini is absolutely brilliant as he struggles to maintain his exagerated sense of dignity under increasingly difficult circumstances. The concentration camp is potrayed as hell on earth- all darkness and forboding. Contrast this with colorful Naples and the liveliness of the residents. The film develops these contrasts in a way that focuses on the power of human endurance and the survival instinct. Giannini has an incredible ability to communicate the full range of human emotions with his eyes alone. A truly astounding and very funny performance. Possibly the best I've ever seen.

As many other Italian movies, I saw "The Seven Beauties" for a few times. One time is never enough. Every time I saw it, I would discover more and more things (words, scenes, faces, mimics, costumes) that I did not see before or I understood them differently. As a good wine, it gets better and better than more you taste it and the more mature it gets (or you get). This film is perfect. The combination of the script, filming, acting, scenes, ideas, and music make it perfect. But Giancarlo Giannini makes it memorable.

This movie frees your heart through comedy and then rips it out with tragedy. Truly a movie that exposes the soul of man, it should be required viewing for all film students.

Pasqualino Frafuso feels the behaviour of his seven sisters reflects badly on his honor so he kills a neighbor who takes one's innocence. (willingly given)

Prison, a mental hospital, the army then WW2 prison camp take so much more than his reputation.

Hilarious at times, excruciating at others, this movie MUST be seen.

What will one do to stay alive? What atrocities will one commit just to exist another day? These are the basic questions Lina Wertmuller asks in this powerful movie. Giancarlo Giannini plays an Italian full of false bravura who is captured by the Germans during WW II and sent to a concentration camp. The conditions are atrocious, and the camp is run by a fat Nazi woman. But he concocts a scheme for self-survival: he tells her he loves her and wants to make love to her. This backfires because after she takes him up on his offer, he's ordered to butcher his own men anyway.

Wertmuller offsets these harrowing prison scenes with flashbacks to an earlier time when Giannini was a bumbling stooge for the Mafia and a skirt-chaser; these comic (though pathetic) scenes make the later ones even more devastating. He survives the war, however, though one wonders if at that price it was worth it. Giannani is excellent - all his acting is expressed in his face: he makes us feel his torment just by reading his expressions. This is very strong stuff, and the effects are lasting.

A wildly chaotic farce by Europe's pioneering female director, Lina Wertmuller's Oscar-nominated "Beauties" begins with a montage of war footage sarcastically narrated by an unseen observer. Then we meet Giannini's macho Italian crook, a not-so-wholesome Everyman who deserts Mussolini's army only to wind up in a nightmarish concentration camp. Wertmuller's acid commentary on Italian politics and society takes us from the whorehouse to the funny farm, the penitentiary to a prisoner-of-war camp, depicting the lengths Pasqualino will go to stay alive--such as becoming the sex slave of an obese, crop-wielding Nazi commander (Shirley Stoler). Memorably perverse, "Beauties" is a surreal, sardonic look at the immorality of war.

to a great director, DO IT RIGHT! NOT HALF-ASSED.
Whats wrong?

While SEVEN BEAUTIES is a much improved transfer, it is NOT 16:9 enhanced;
-incredible given the fact this is 2005, not 1998!

SWEPT AWAY and SUMMER NIGHTS FULL OF RAIN are 16:9 and look good;

So my big queston is: why did they omit THE SEDUCTION OF MIMI and LOVE & ANARCHY? these four films represent the bulk of her classics-SUMMER NIGHTS saw Wertmuller-master as she is-going off course.

These films are far more well known to US audiences and are great films-
the 'filler" the box uses THE NYMPH, and FERDINAND AND ISIBELLA are OK, BUT THE PRINTS ARE ATTROCIOUS! and non 16:9...

There are Italian versions of TSOM and L&A, abut they have no english subs...

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 as 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.

I saw this initally in a dubbed version, and it still enthralled me. Now, thanks to Koch Lorber/Fox Lorber, it's on DVD in its original Italian with subtitles. From its brilliant opening montage of war footage narrated by an acerbic narrator, to its final, horrifying scene in a concentration camp, this film goes all over the place from comedy to drama to pathos to horror. It is seamless and unforgettable. This is Lina Wertmueller's best film. It is an incredibly emotional experience.

Seven Beauties (Lina Wertmuller, 1975)

To say that Seven Beauties is not the type of film I was expecting, given Lina Wertmuller's reputation, would be an understatement. The upside of it is that, as far as concentration camp black comedies go, Seven Beauties stands pretty much head and shoulders above the field; it's certainly miles better than Life Is Beautiful.

Pasqualino Frafuso (Giancarlo Giannini, who will, tragically, probably be best remembered by American audiences for Darkness) is known as Pasqualino Seven Beauties, because he lives with his otherwise all-female family (the term is sarcastic). As we open, Pasqualino and his friend Francesco (the late Piero di Iorio) have just deserted the Italian army during World War II; to pass the time as they trudge along, Pasqualino tells the story of his earlier life and how he got sent to the army. This takes up roughly the first half of the film, and veers between a kind of deeply black slapstick comedy and utter horror (on the part of the viewer, anyway). The latter half occurs after the two of them have been caught and sent to a German concentration camp, and here the real story begins; Pasqualino, whose entire existence is predicated on the idea that he will do anything to survive and support his family, hatches a rather insane plan to seduce the camp's commandant (well-known character actress Shirley Stoller, fresh off a role in Klute). The question at the heart of the movie: how far will Pasqualino go to survive?

What makes Seven Beauties a different breed of film than most other concentration-camp flicks is Wertmuller's unflinching attitude that, seemingly, no barbarity, no cruelty, no horror, depicted on film could ever match the real barbarity, cruelty, and horror of the concentration camps themselves. We take this as a given today, but we still usually expect the nasty bits to take place a bit to the left of the actual viewing frustum; Wertmuller hands them to us, warts and all. Perhaps more to the point, though, is Pasqualino himself-- his motives are pure, so we can't help but identify with him, but as his actions become more and more morally questionable, what does this do to our identification with him? And how does this identification make us feel about ourselves?

These are questions, obviously, that everyone will answer differently, and to attempt any sort of universal answer to them would be the height of folly. Because the film provokes such radically differing responses among its viewers, simply saying "this is a very good film, you'll like it" would be wrong. It is, however, the kind of film you should see whether you end up liking it or not; answering those questions for yourself can be a very illuminating experience, if you've the stomach for it. ***