Seven Beauties

"The finest, most ambitious work yet made by this gifted Italian director ... at the peak of her energies." – Vincent Canby, New York Times

Wertmüller's crowning achievement takes the Chaplinesque tendency in her work - the melding of the comic and tragic - to its furthest and most dangerous extreme. Giannini is unforgettable as Pasqualino, the wily Neapolitan anti-hero who manages to awaken our deepest sympathies, suspicions and eventually horror as he tries to charm his way out of series of scandalous situations, culminating notoriously in a Nazi concentration camp. An international smash hit, Seven Beauties was nominated for four Oscars - best director, actor, screenplay and foreign language film.

Director Lina Wertmüller emblazoned her name in the pantheon of Italian cinema reinventing the narrative forms and character types of her country's comedy. The passionate invectives against social, cultural and historical inequities at the heart of her mid-1970s masterworks The Seduction of Mimi, Love and Anarchy, Swept Away and Seven Beauties helped the pictures find an appreciative audience, especially in the US, where they broke box-office records for foreign films, made Giancarlo Giannini and Mariangela Melato an indelible screen couple, and secured Wertmüller an Oscar nomination for Best Director - the very first woman named for this category. Lovingly restored to their original full-length splendor, the return of these four beauties is a timely reminder of what we've missed all these years.

A Lina Wertmüller: Four Beauties series pass is now on sale. This $25 pass grants one admission to all four films in the retrospective.
Purchase a Series Pass here!

Join us for a wine reception on Friday, May 5 starting at 5:30 pm followed by Swept Away at 6:30 pm, courtesy of Società Dante Alighieri.

Check out the rest of our Lina Wertmüller: Four Beauties program!

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