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MACHISMO

Today's NYTimes Best 1176 Film was Lina Wertmüller's

Pasqualino Settebellezze / Seven Beauties (1976)

Pasqualino (Giancarlo Giannini) is the macho brother of seven ugly sisters. Talk about your overcompensation.

In Italian, Pasqualino Seven Beauties; the name he gives to people as he swaggers through Naples.

He is a plaster macho; a fool.

This film shows what happens when a macho fool gets caught up in the reality of WWII.

It is quite a story.

This is a very funny film as well as a very tragic one. Pasqualino's transformation to 'adulthood' or the consequences of his pose when made real by circumstance is the subtext.

This is a very beautiful film of a very horrible story.

It is imperfect for me only in the sense that Wertmüller gets all self indulgent at various points and wants to wallow a bit in the evil of things. This is a norm for Italian films—operatic— and it is OK as far as it goes but she goes an evil too far.

I will give it a 4 out of Netflix5.

Labels: best films