Seven Beauties (Lina Wertmüller, 1975)

Giancarlo Giannini in Seven Beauties

Cast: Giancarlo Giannini, Fernando Rey, Shirley Stoler, Elena Fiore, Piero Di Iorio, Enzo Vitale, Roberto Herlitzka, Lucio Amelio, Ermelinda De Felice, Biaca D'Origlia, Francesca Marciano. Screenplay: Lina Wertmüller. Cinematography: Tonino Delli Colli. Production design: Enrico Job. Film editing: Franco Fraticelli. Music: Enzo Jannacci. 

As a student of literature, I was called on to memorize the seven deadly sins: pride, envy, wrath, avarice, sloth, gluttony, and lechery. But I don't think I was ever made to recall the corresponding virtues, which the medieval church categorized as humility, kindness, patience, charity, diligence, temperance, and chastity. Our age has added another to the list of virtues: survival. We speak of "survival of the fittest," which has caused us to couple fitness with health as the supreme necessities for survival. One of our most popular TV shows, now in its 45th season, is Survivor, the reality competition show that has a motto: "Outwit. Outplay. Outlast." Which brings us to Pasqualino Frafuso, aka "Settebellezze" or "Seven Beauties," the protagonist of Lina Wertmüller's scarifying satire Seven Beauties. Pasqualino commits almost every one of the seven deadly sins all for the sake of survival. He outwits, outplays, and outlasts the worst that can befall him in Europe under the heel of the Nazis, lying, killing, raping, seducing as the means to an end: staying alive. And of course we loathe him for it, while at the same time questioning what we would do in the same circumstances. Seven Beauties is an unsubtle film, and its lack of finesse in character and situation works against its ostensible aim as a moral fable. It makes a feint at seriousness of purpose by introducing a sympathetic character, Pasqualino's friend Francesco (Piero Di Iorio), and a moral exemplar, the anarchist Pedro (Fernando Rey), but the dominant note of the film is a sour nihilism. Giancarlo Giannini's performance as Pasqualino would be a standout in any film: He's introduced to us as a Chaplinesque caricature of a strutting dandy, and for a while it's fun to watch him go from bad to worse, as in his efforts to dispose of the body of a man he has killed. But soon a queasiness sets in, as we wonder how much lower this worm can crawl. There should be no redemption for a Pasqualino, but instead Wertmüller gives us a cynical ending, suggesting that Pasqualino will repopulate the Earth with his own kind, in his own words, "A rotten comedy, a lousy farce, called living." 

Ferdinando and Carolina (Lina Wertmüller, 1999)

Empress Maria Theresa of Austria (Silvana De Santis) with her daughters in Ferdinando and Carolina

Cast: Sergio Assisi, Gabriella Pession, Nicole Grimaudo, Lola Pagnani, Silvana De Santis, Matt Patresi, Carlo Caprioli, Yari Gugliucci, Mario Scacci. Screenplay: Lina Wertmüller, Raffaele La Capria. Cinematography: Blasco Giurato. Production design: Enrico Job. Film editing: Pierluigi Leonardi. Music: Italo Greco, Paolo Raffone, Marcello Vitale.

For a time in the early to mid-1970s, Lina Wertmüller was one of the hottest directors in the world, becoming among other things the first woman ever nominated for an Oscar for best director. The film, Seven Beauties (1977), also earned her a nomination for screenwriting. And then somehow her reputation, at least in the United States, faded. She had signed a five-film contract with Warner Bros. to make movies in the English language, but the first of them, A Night Full of Rain (1978), was a box office failure and the contract was canceled. She continued to make movies in Italy, but they received little attention in the United States. Ferdinando and Carolina wasn't released theatrically here, but was available on a DVD. I caught up with it on the Criterion Channel. It's a lively and opulent historical comedy-drama about the marriage of Ferdinando of Naples and Maria Carolina of Austria -- one of the 11 daughters of the Empress Maria Theresa and, incidentally, a sister of Marie Antoinette. There is a certain frenzied, over-the-top character to all of Wertmüller's films, and Ferdinando and Carolina is no exception. It consists of the reminiscences of Ferdinando, King of Naples, as he lies on his deathbed. That most of these memories are sexual is no surprise. Although he was reluctant to marry Carolina, especially after the deaths from smallpox of two of her sisters, and she was equally reluctant to marry him because his portraits showed him to be a man with a large nose, they take to each other almost instantly on their wedding night. Eventually, court intrigue and their own love affairs take a toll on the marriage. The principals, Sergio Assisi as the young Ferdinando and Gabriella Pession as Carolina, are appropriately handsome, and they throw themselves into their roles with abandon. As history, the movie is no better than most, lacking any center but the libidos of its principals, but it has a kind of energy that carries one along. And it features some spectacular interior and exterior scenes shot in various Italian locations, so that the major honors of the film really belong to production designer Enrico Job.

Love and Anarchy (Lina Wertmüller, 1973)

Lina Wertmüller was a big deal 40 years ago, when I saw Swept Away (1974) and Seven Beauties (1975) in the theater. The latter earned her the distinction as the first woman ever nominated for the best director Oscar. (She lost to John G. Avildsen for Rocky, and the less said about that the better.) I remember thinking that her films were wound a little too tight, and seeing Love and Anarchy rather confirms my opinion. The performances are ratcheted up at times to near-hysteria, and things that could be said are shouted. But even when Wertmüller's cast is milking it for all it's worth, it's clear that she has a point of view and the means to express it, especially with the two actors on whom she frequently called during her directorial heyday. As Tunin, the "bumpkin" who has taken on the task of assassinating Mussolini, Giancarlo Giannini plays a complete dramatic arc, from the wide-eyed, almost comatose naïf who finds himself lodged in a Roman brothel and then goes through stages of passion, fear, disgust, commitment, and a final martyrdom. Mariangela Melato as the prostitute Salomè doesn't have such a grand arc to traverse, but somehow she manages to let traces of humanity show through the flamboyant façade she has adopted. Eros Pagni as the odious Fascist Spatoletti and Lia Polito as Tripolina, the winsome prostitute who wins Tunin's heart, are also good, though their roles verge a bit on caricature. The handsome cinematography is by Giuseppe Rotunno, who at one point expresses the divisions in Tunin's character by a tricky, brilliant shot that shows Giannini and his reflections in two different mirrors.