|
Seven Beauties (1975, It.) (aka
Pasqualino Settebellezze)
In director Lina Wertmuller's tragi-comic war film
(she became the first Oscar-nominated female director for this film):
- the dream-like opening credits sequence with a jazzy
tune (repeating the refrain: "Oh yeah"), about man's
inhumanity to man throughout history (with stock WWII documentary
photos of Mussolini and Hitler, bombs, and trench warfare)
- the character of small-time Naples crook Pasqualino
Frafuso (Oscar-nominated Giancarlo Giannini) who had to support his
many ugly sisters and mother
- his time in an insane asylum (where he raped a bound
madwoman) after murdering and dismembering the pimp who coerced his
sister into a life of prostitution
- the scenes in a WWII Nazi concentration camp when
a desperate, debased and unscrupulous Pasqualino traded sexual favors
with the grotesquely-obese, whip-wielding commandant (Shirley Stoler)
for survival (she told him: 'You have found the strength for an erection,
that's why you'll survive") - but he also chose those to be
executed (and also killed his best friend)
- the film's final shot - in closeup - of Pasqualino
returning home and his sadly-spoken words to his mother: "Yes,
I'm alive"
|
|