Seven Beauties (1975) earned director Lina Wertmüller the distinction of be-coming the first woman to be nominated for a Best Director Academy Award. The film, which was also nominated for Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen and Best Foreign Language Film, is the strange tale of Pasqualino (Giancarlo Giannini), an obsessive moralist with seven unattractive sisters. When one is seduced by a pimp and becomes a prostitute, Pasqualino kills the pimp, chops up the body and ships it to various parts of the country. After being tried and convicted, he is committed to an asy-lum but is released so he can serve in the Italian Army during World War II. The tables are turned on Pasqualino when he is captured by the Germans and becomes a prostitute himself, forced into having sex with a sadistic female prison commandant. Wertmüller has explained her films as "two strands - two souls - which coexist in my work: the light-hearted one associated with musical comedies and the more socially conscious one." Her career began when a friend, who had married the actor Marcello Mastroianni, intro-duced her to Mastroianni's frequent director Federico Fellini, who gave her the job of as-sistant director on ...e Napoli canta! (1953), tasked with finding interesting faces. Seven Beauties was one of four Wertmüller films that were released simultane-ously in New York in 1976, earning her critical plaudits (Roger Ebert called it "one of the strangest and most intriguing of recent European films") and equally critical distain. Wertmüller's success took her and Giannini (who starred in four of the five films Wertmüller made between 1972 and 1975) on a tour across the United States. By con-trast, she didn't create much of a stir in Italy, where her films were often dismissed.

By Lorraine LoBianco