If ["Seven Beauties"] is to be taken for mere entertainment, I must state my disgust that the abomination of genocide and the tortures and degradations of the concentration camp are used as a special, uniquely macabre titillation to enhance its effectiveness. But I believe that Lina Wertmüller, the director, had more in mind, even though at certain moments the opportunities her story offered for sophisticated deathhouse comedy may have carried her away….

I also believe that "Seven Beauties" is a somewhat uneasy, indirect, camouflaged—and therefore more dangerous, because more easily accepted and hence more effective—justification for accepting the world that produced concentration camps; it is a self-justification for those who readily accepted that world under these conditions and profited from it. (p. 31)

["Seven Beauties"], by truthfully suggesting that people remain more or less the same even under concentration-camp conditions, but also by showing the camp...