Directed by: Lina Wertmuller
With: Giancarlo Giannini
Duration: 115 mins

Nominated - Best Director & Best Screenplay – 1976 Academy Awards.

Pasqualino (Giancarlo Giannini), a small-time crook, lives in Naples with his mother and seven sisters. When his older sister is persuaded into prostitution by her lover, Pasqualino - faithful to the family’s strict code of honour -  murders him, and mails pieces of the body all over Italy. Pleading insanity, he’s sent to an asylum, where as a result of further unseemly behavior, he’s sent to fight on the Eastern front. Soon captured by the Nazi's and incarcerated in a concentration camp, Pasqualino offers sexual favours to the grotesque female commandant who, knowing he’s only doing it to stay alive, shows her contempt by forcing him to choose the prisoners to be executed…

Exquisitely realized, SEVEN BEAUTIES is a truly incomparable treatment of serious themes in a satirical tragi-comic manner that is frequently surprising, and sometimes uncomfortable. Shifting tone several times, from comic to tragic, from drama to romance to action, Wertmuller manages to keep a delicate balance, and her deft handling of issues such as anarchy, sexuality and survival is witty, stimulating and controversial. Giannini, is simply put, astounding in the main role.

Digital Presentation
Not screening in Canberra