Seven beauties = Pasqualino settebellezze

Giancarlo Giannini is Pasqualino, a small-time crook in Naples, who when he is not busy making love and making money, is protecting the honour of his seven obese sisters, the beauties of the title. This amazing movie follows Pasqualino’s Candide-like adventures through an Italy ravaged by fascism and war: he kills one sister’s pimp, goes from prison to insane asylum, becomes a soldier and eventually an intern in a Nazi concentration camp. Regardless of the enormity of the horror and savagery he encounters, his main priority remains the assertion of his sexual and masculine prowess. Wertmuller has consistently explored the inter-relations between fascism and machismo. “Seven Beauties” remains her most wickedly subversive and audacious film, mixing black humour, lyrical film-making and scenes of almost unbearable brutality to expose the perversity of class relations. Though this film may offend many viewers, precisely because it does not as much condemn as ridicule fascism, for others this will be a liberating film to watch. This is truly anarchic film-making. Also stars Fernando Rey. NB: This film is dubbed in English.