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Wertmuller fashions the film so that even the paradoxes double back on each other. Pasqualino is a murderer and rap ist. But he is a rogue, too, winning be cause of his shabby, transparent charm.
The ferocity of his life force compels sympathy, but it is the persistence of that very force Wertmuller questions. Seven Beauties suggests that there are prices that must never be met: survival may not be its own justification.
Giancarlo Giannini is the storm center of the movie, and he acts Pasqual ino with sulfurous splendor. Giannini, with eyes of stinging intensity, has been leading man for Wertmuller in all her movies released in America. Like her, Giannini knows how to work right at the taproot of his character. There has been no one quite like him since Mastroianni, but Giannini shows an even wider range, not just of roles, but of spirit.
Image of Horror. The movie is vastly ambitious, but it is also jaunty and diverting. There is time for an affection ate send-up of Bertolucci: Giannini's en trance into a Neapolitan music hall, stupidly splendid with a cigarette holder and snap-brim hat, recalls The Conform ist. There are some good visual puns:
the camp commandant straddling her office chair like a grotesque Dietrich.
Director Wertmuller invests the concentration-camp episodes with a power that reminds us how those images of horror have been turned into familiar cliches. One measure of Wert muller's talents is that she forges all these elements together so easily, probably because she has enjoyed such a varied career. Once an assistant to Fellini, Lina Wertmuller, 45, has directed the ater, mounted musicals, even created a television program of Italian pop tunes.
Traces and refinements of all those influences are still present in her work, but she unites them with carefree ease, as if the connections were there before she made them. Her humor is startling and raucous, but always purposeful. The comedy complements, never contradicts, the brilliant brute force of her movie.