Giancarlo Giannini as Pasqualino "Seven Beauties" in Lina Wertmuller's film, Seven Beauties. REVIEW

7 Beauties marred by director Wertmuller's hatred of women

by DuMont Howard

Pasqualino "Seven Beauties" (Giancarlo Giannini) is a poor Italian with seven unattractive, unmarried sisters (hence his nick name), one of whom

has a penchant for prostitution. To protect the family honor Pasqulino kills the pimp who is also his sister's boyfriend. Pleading insanity, he is sent to a institution, from which he is released prematurely to join Mussolini's army. He deserts, but is caught by the Germans and sent to a concentration camp.

Determined to survive, Pasqualino decides to seduce the enormous woman who runs the camp (Shirley Stoler). He succeeds, overcoming his impotence, and she appoints him the head of his barracks on the condition that he choose six prisoners to be killed. If not, she will kill the whole barracks. He agrees to select six.

When the war is over he retur ns home to find that his womanfriend has become a prostitute. He offers to marry her anyway, insisting the marriage take place immediately so that they may start producing children to protect them against the harsh world.

As in Swept Away, we have Giancarlo Giannini portraying director Lina Wertmuller's conception of the Common Man and his place in society. And once again Wertmuller attempts to throw in everything she can, as if hoping that if she loaded the film with as many diverse elements as she could, a well-plotted story line might emerge. Nothing less than a grand statement will serve Wertmuller, yet she never maintains a consistent enough approach. to her material to let her message work. Here the idea is to show how

the Common Man is brutalized, forced to sacrifice honor and integrity merely to survive. Fine. However, Wertmuller destroys the point she is trying to make by asking her material to deliver in several conflicting ways. So when Pasqualino "saves" his sister (whom. Wertmuller makes slovenly, stupid and happy cause that's funny) from prostitution he isn't being altruistic he's doing it to save his honor.

The central problem of the film is Giancarlo Giannini's portrayal of Pasqualino. Giannini is a limited actor. His Common Man is a great deal more common than he is interesting or compelling. Wertmuller has a blind spot either for what she believes to be the Common Man or else for Giannini himself. Of course Giannini does have Those Eyes, but he and Wertmuller use them for more than they're worth. A pitiful glance is not a sufficient excuse for raping women, or killing best friends and pimps, and that's really the only excuse Wertmuller provides. Pasqualino is more the victimizer than the victimized.

The element in the film that I find the most disturbing is, as in

Page B12-GAY NEWS May 1976

Swept Away, Wertmuller's obvious hatred of women. Her women are bitches-either coarse, stupid bitches or beautiful, shallow bitches. It's no accident that the dramatic climax of Seven Beauties is the "humiliating but humorous" attempt by the starving, impotent Pasqualino to mount the enormous Nazi commander. That the commander is a woman is both an historical improbability and a typical Wertmuller plot convenience. In the film women bring all the trouble and humiliation while rapist/killer Pasqualino is presented to us as a charming, picaresque character worn down by life's brutalities.

To her credit, Wertmuller does many things quite well-mostly technical. It is her moral sensibility or lack of it-that limits her films. Seven Beauties has a dazzling opening sequence of WWII footage with a narration enumerating the vagaries of humanity ("...those who believe that Jesus Christ was Santa Claus as a young man..."). And the film looks lovely, but two hours is a long time to spend looking at scenery.

an R rated, rather kinky tale of survival

a boy and his dog

NO ONE ADMITTED AFTER PERFORMANCE STARTS... IT HAS TO BE SEEN FROM THE BEGINNING!

Technicolore R

REVIEW

Hitchcock takes a comic turn in Family Plot

by Stephen Underhill

Family Plot proves what some of us have long suspected: namely, that deep down the "diabolical" old "master of suspense," Alfred Hitchcock, is really an irrepressible clown. This latest movie is the closest approach to pure comedy he has ever attempted, and it is a pleasure to report that it is an almost unqualified success. One of the funniest movies to come along in years, it ranks with Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles and Woody Allen's Love and Death except that it is better controlled and more unified than the former, and much lessesoteric than the latter.

The suspense generated by the converging double plot lines is not, as in most other Hitchock films, the main purpose. Rather, it is a sort of counterpoint utilized to keep the comic interplay of the main leads Barbara Harris as the fake medium "Madame Blanche" and Bruce Dern as her cab-driving, frustrated actor boyfriend and go-fer from becoming trivialized. We know from the start that nothing really bad can happen to two goofballs as flawless as these, so even when they're apparently riding to their deaths in an out-of-control car on a twisting mountain road (much like Cary Grant's similar. ride in North by Northwest), we laugh more at their hysterical reaction than cringe at their narrow escapes. There is only one death shown in the movie, and it

is of a throughly deserving villain who brings it on himself.

Much of the credit for Family Plot's potted delights must go to writer Ernest Lehman, who has, provided a script reminiscent of the best of Hollywood's so-called "Golden Age" in the 30s and 40s. There are plenty of outright wisecracks, but the choicest humor arises from the situations.

Dern, who has slogged his way through more unrewarding roles than many actors twice his age and with half his talent, blossoms in this one. His triumph at the end is an inspiration to loveable losers everywhere. Barbara Harris is equally perfect. It may be a sign of filmic "decadence," but they are both most delightful when they are skillfully portraying their characters' inept attempts at acting (she as an entranced psychic, he as a relentless gumshoe).

While Karen Black is adequate in the role of "Fran," the lover and accomplice of jeweler turned kidnapper/jewel thief William Devane, Devane himself too often seems like a stand-in for Jack Nicholson. Hitchcock allows him to walk through the undemanding part using secondhand gestures, inflections, and devices. He's not even interesting enough to hate.

Family Plot has no message, no lasting importance, barely any substance at all. It's just for fun. But on that it delivers.

Photo courtesy Universal Pictures

Barbara Harris as "Madame Blanche" going into one of her questionable "trances" in Hitchcock's Family Plot.

ARTISTS!!!

WIN A FREE GAY NEWS SUBSCRIPTION!

PLUS A CASH BONUS!!!

Submit a cartoon for our editorial page (must be fairly serious---could possibly utilize satire) next issue... just send it to us by our next deadline. If we choose your cartoon, you'll automatically begin receiving the Gay News with the issue your cartoon appears in . . . in a plain, sealed envelope. And we'll send you a $5 cash bonus!

Cartoons should be designed so that we can reduce to a final 4" by 4" size, and should be done on plain, white paper or illustration board in black ink. Be sure to include your name, address and zipcode and be sure to indicate if you want your name to be published in a credit line directly below the cartoon should it be chosen.

Send to: CARTOON, Gay News Chain, P. O. Box 10236, Pittsburgh, Pa.

15232.