Oh, hello, another downer about oppression in Europe. This one stands out first and foremost for making Lina Wertmüller the first woman (of only five to date) to garner an Academy Best Director nomination. If no one had told me, I would not have guessed that a woman directed it.
Pasqualino "Settebellezze" (Giancarlo Giannini) starts as a smooth criminal who will defend his sense of honor in defiance of the law, but as soon as he kills his sister's wretched boyfriend, his life is largely a series of cowardly decisions to maximize his chances of life at the cost of honor. This includes pleading insane, volunteering for the army in World War II, and deserting at the first opportunity. When he ends up in a concentration camp, he puts his ladies' man wiles to the test, hoping to win mercy from the ice-cold commandant (Shirley Stoler).
I have not been able to find a full explanation of the title. Yes, it's the literal translation of Pasqualino's nickname, given in sarcasm to a self-described ugly man who nevertheless has women flock to him, but why seven? Some sort of mythos? Anyway, he could be the poster boy for what Seinfeld termed "kavorka," the power to attract with no discernible reason. He's certainly not a likable character. In addition to the aforementioned wrongdoings, he rapes a bound mental patient as soon as he sees her, citing long deprivation as his only excuse. (This is not important to the plot.) Not even the horrors of the camp could make me feel sorry for him.
Speaking of which, I learned from Life Is Beautiful that an Italian movie could be set partly in a concentration camp and still provide a lot of humor, but LIB doesn't include any on-screen death. By contrast, SB doesn't shy away from showing people gunned into trenches or piling up naked corpses. It's not harrowing for as long as Come and See, but it's enough to make me wait a while before the next viewing that might include Holocaust imagery.
People who discuss SB often talk up the funny aspects, but only a couple of scenes pertaining to Pasqualino's attempts to evade police really strike me as comedic. (Might I say, Italians sure like their fart gags.) Giannini may continue to ham it up like a comedian, but you need to be pretty twisted to laugh at anything after his conviction. In this regard, it reminds me a little of Underground, an Eastern European comedy-drama that becomes far more tragic than the usual hype suggests.
SB does at least have a clearer point to make than Underground: It's not always the most honorable people who survive. A pretty bitter viewpoint, but no less true for that. In truth, the film feels bitterest right at the beginning, when B&W war footage is overlaid by an unidentified narrator listing various sorts of people, frequently punctuated by "Oh yeah" (in English), apparently implying contempt for them all. I almost wanted to stop watching before the story had begun.
I'm not sorry I watched. I may even put another Wertmüller opus on my queue. But I will be wary about such things. She seems to specialize in comedy-dramas, and if this one is any indication, I'll want to time the next carefully.
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