He was the editor of Seven Beauties (1976); Wertmüller became the first woman to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director for this film.
In his 1976 essay "Surviving", Bruno Bettelheim, while admiring the film's artistry, severely criticizes the impression it makes of the experience of concentration camp survivors.
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The wife of the camp's commandant Karl Otto Koch, she took sadistic pleasure in torturing inmates, and was accused of having lampshades made out of their skin, though these charges were dropped due to lack of evidence.
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Giancarlo Giannini starred in three other films Wertmüller made during this period: The Seduction of Mimi (1972), Love and Anarchy (1973), and Swept Away (1974).
Gallery of Beauties | Seven Beauties | Four Beauties | Two women playing with a lap dog, China, 8th century, ''Beauties Wearing Flowers'' by Tang Dynasty | Lord Erskine's daughter, the Honourable Jane Erskine, circa 1838, in the Gallery of Beauties | Josepha Conti's portrait in the Gallery of Beauties | Hampton Court Beauties | Callandar's first wife, the Honourable Jane Erskine, c. 1838, in the Gallery of Beauties |
The highlight of her film career arguably was her turn as the repulsive Nazi female prison commandant in Lina Wertmüller's Pasqualino Settebellezze (1975) (Seven Beauties), in which she plays a cat and mouse game of seduction with the concentration camp inmate played by Giancarlo Giannini.