Lina Wertmüller's History-Making "Seven Beauties"
Thursday, October 17, 2019 at 6:24PM The Governors Awards (Honorary Oscars) will be held on October 27th, 2019 with director Lina Wertmüller, actress Geena Davis, director David Lynch, and actor Wes Studi celebrated. We'll be discussing each of them before then.
by new contributor Camila Henriques
In Seven Beauties, Lina Wertmüller is not interested in sparing the audience. That becomes clear in the first minutes of the film, when we’re presented with a myriad of images of the Second World War: Hitler, explosions, destruction. In the background, a voice over speaks with a hint of melancholy and irony about “the ones who keep going and going just to see how it will end”...
Seven Beauties is a tale about the loss of innocence and morals. It's also a brave take on life during a totalitarian regime - the movie is set during WWII, a time when Italy was commanded by fascist leader Benito Mussolini, whose alliance to Adolf Hitler was one of the decisive factors for the war to explode.
While the post-Second War italian cinema showed the economic and social aftermath in the villages and destroyed cities (think Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio de Sica), Wertmüller’s work in the seventies had a mix of political criticism and a more stylized technique (she had previously been an assistant to Federico Fellini). Her actors and camera work were exaggerated and histrionic at times, as opposed to Rossellini and De Sica’s more documentary-like eye. The use of color is another important aspect of her work. Note the green that innebriates the scenery as the lead character suffers physically at the end of Seven Beauties.
The protagonist "Pasqualino Settebelleze" (also the original name of the film), who is played by Wertmüller's frequent collaborator Giancarlo Giannini, is a man caught up in a tangle of memories including a lock-up in a concentration camp after he tries to desert the army.
Wertmüller invites us to Pasqualino’s past, and we discover that he’s not the classic archetype of a hero to root for. He has raped, killed and schemed his way through life. The beauty of the director’s work lies in the fact that she doesn’t wants us to love him right away: he’s a flawed man ironic to the point that his “Seven Beauties” nickname is a way of mocking his seven sisters who are anything but beauties. The film is not interested in becoming another weepy Holocaust drama (cough, ‘Life is Beautiful, cough). In fact, “Seven Beauties” is a raw tale of survival through violence.
The abundance of closeups (trust me, there’s tons of them!) can be a turnoff, but, this choice definitely helps Giancarlo Giannini's poignant performance -- his face is truly the center. The pain, fear and anger displayed are not nuanced but the stylized exaggeration fits the narrative. He ended up nominated for a Best Actor Oscar, but lost out to Peter Finch, whose performance in Network is of the same cloth, far from understated and using histrionics to potent effect.
Speaking of Oscar, Seven Beauties put Lina Wertmüller in the history books as she became the first (of only 5) women to be nominated for Best Director. At that time, Oscar was almost 50 years old, and greats like Agnes Varda, Ida Lupino, Dorothy Arzner and Elaine May had been snubbed in favor of a some lesser male colleagues - Varda did get an Honorary Oscar and a subsequent nomination for Faces/Places a couple of years ago (after decades of working steadily), but inexplicably lost to a 60 Minutes kind of documentary.
It’s interesting to ponder what made the Academy fall in love with Wertmüller. They'd previously been blind to female directors and her film doesn’t fit the mold of other foreign masterpieces that were recognized through the years. Even though her Fellini roots show, as a director she clearly followed her own path.
When Seven Beauties came out, American film critics and, as a consequence, the Academy, were in the middle of their love affair with the progressive, violent and character driven films made by the New Hollywood gang. Seven Beauties fits the mold in that sense, but there was also the bandwagon + goodwill factor: before this 1975 film, Lina had already a couple of NYFCC mentions for Swept Away, one the most famous titles in her filmography. In an expanded best picture scenario, it wouldn’t be so crazy to think Seven Beauties could have gotten a nod there. After all, it was nominated for best Director, Actor, Screenplay (another one for Wertmüller) and Foreign Film, where it ended up losing to Jean-Jacques Annaud’s Black and White in Color.
As Wertmüller cleans up the lenses of her iconic white glasses to accept her long overdue Honorary Oscar, it’s a fact that her place in history goes beyond that nomination in 1976. She was fully in command of her own voice as a storyteller and didn’t shy away from difficult and discomforting narratives.
Reader Comments (6)
As I recall, the 1976 Best Director Oscar nomination for Wertmüller wasn't that big a surprise. There was an obvious effort of the directors in that era to recognize those who helmed foreign language films. This was the fifth year in a row that one or two Best Director Oscar nominations went to the director of a foreign language film. More importantly, Seven Beauties was a film seriously addressing the Holocaust. Such films have always been Oscar bait.
I think the more interesting surprise was the failure of Seven Beauties to land a Best Picture nomination. A film recognized for director, actor and screenplay would expect a picture nomination as well. Hal Ashby's Bound for Glory, a beautifully shot but fairly routine bio pic of Woody Guthrie, and Martin Scorsese's landmark Taxi Driver snagged those two Best Picture nominations without acknowledgement of their respective directors. Directors in AMPAS clearly walked their own path for much of this decade. Vote tallies would be so interesting to review.
I saw this film a few years ago as I was unprepared for what I was to see as it definitely was proof that Lina Wertmuller wasn't just ahead of her time but a filmmaker that was a true artist. I hope to do more of her work. Especially from the 1970s.
Lina Wertmüller was also nominated to the Directors Guild as Best Director for Seven Beauties which shows that her nomination was supported in addition Seven Beauties was also nominated for Actor and Screenplay.
_Directors Guild Nominees:
Alan J. Pakula - All the President's Men
Sidney Lumet - Network
John G. Avildsen - Rocky (Winner)
Lina Wertmüller - Seven Beauties
Martin Scorsese - Taxi Driver
In the Oscar Ingmar Bergman replacement to Martin Scorsese.
I think the surprise came when Black and White in Color (Côte d'Ivoire) won the Oscar over Seven Beauties and the french Cousin cousine. It sounds strange to me the participation of Black and White in Color considering that in the entire history of Oscar Côte d'Ivoire he has only participated twice.
What a film! Thanks for the great write-up.
I agree that Wertmuller's nomination only seems like a surprise due to her gender, as no woman had been nominated in this category before. An Italian film about the Second World War and the Holocaust was very much in the Directors' branch's wheelhouse in the 1970s.
On the question of Best Picture: from 1975 to 1986, the Academy had a rule that films submitted for the Foreign Language Film Oscar could be eligible for all other categories except Best Picture. Seven Beauties, therefore, was ineligible for Best Picture.
Seven Beauties had opened in January 1976 to thunderous raves -- Variety noted that even Nashville, which had opened the previous summer and was an overwhelming choice of the critics' group, hadn't been quite as universally praised. For most of 1976, I'd expected Seven Beauties to win at least the NY Critics' Award (they were on a three-year streak of choosing non-English-speaking films), but I guess a year was a long time to hold the front-runner position, because the film finished third, behind All the President's Men and Network. It still seemed a sure bet for directing/writing Oscar nominations, given how frequently foreign films had been receiving nods in those categories. The much-deserved Giannini nod was the only real surprise.
It was, though, a shocker that Black and White in Color -- a movie most of us had never even heard of (it had yet to play in the US at Oscar time) -- ended up winning foreign film. 1976 was only the second year under a new voting system for the category: only those who had receipts from screenings for every nominated film were allowed to cast a ballot. This eliminated any visibility advantage Seven Beauties (or the popular Cousin Cousine) had -- in fact, you could argue something obscure like Black & White in Color had the edge, because only the small number of people who'd seen it were allowed to make this choice. Startling winners became the norm in the years just following (like 1980, when Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears beat out the way-higher-profile Kagemusha and The Last Metro).
Seven Beauties being denied even that crumb is probably the strongest argument for Wertmuller getting this special award.
A classic picaresque story: it's told with a light, sprightly touch that keeps the proceedings from becoming unbearably weepy. That silent courtroom scene where is fate is sealed is a marvellous feat of direction, as is that final close-up.