There are, broadly speaking, two kinds of greatness in art: that of transcending previously known boundaries, of defying all norms; and that of perfect taste, of working with exquisite tact within one's limitations. In music, for example, this would be the difference between a Wagner or Mahler on the one hand, and a Fauré or Ravel on the other; in painting, between a Michelangelo or Picasso and a Botticelli or Degas. The artists of pure taste seem, rightly or wrongly, to possess a smaller greatness, though I often prefer them to the other sort. But there exists, fascinatingly, even a rare third kind that combines aspects of the two divergent greatnesses—artists who are, somehow, both big and small, fierce and civilized, beyond taste and yet also, miraculously, tasteful….

Seven Beauties (Pasqualino Settebellezze), the new film by Lina Wertmüller, strikes me as the work of this third...