The picaresque story follows its hero, Pasqualino (Giannini), who is serving a prison sentence for killing a pimp who turned his sister into a prostitute to save the family honour. Sent to a psychiatric prison and desperate to get out, he volunteers for the Italian Army, but then deserts, gets captured and gets sent to a concentration camp somewhere in Germany. Here Pasqualino tries to seduce the big, fat, ugly female commandant (Stoler) in order to save his own life. The plan succeeds except for the fact that Pasqualino is put in charge of the barracks as a capo, and has to select six men to be killed under the threat that they will all be killed if he doesn't do it. Pasqualino ends up shooting his best friend in the head and being responsible for the death of his other friend, an Italian anarchist. Pasqualino later prostitutes himself, and upon his return to Naples finds that his seven sisters, fiancée and even his mother have survived and become prostitutes.

The film was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Actor in a Leading Role, Best Director, Best Foreign Language Film and Best Original Screenplay. Wertmuller was the first woman ever nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director.

The film was controversial at the time for its graphic depiction of concentration camps. Bruno Bettelheim, while admiring the film's artistry, severely criticizes the impression it makes of the experience of concentration camp survivors in his 1976 essay "Surviving".

Shirley Stoler's character was based on Ilse Koch, notoriously known as "the Bitch of Buchenwald". The wife of the camp's commandant Karl Otto Koch, she took sadistic pleasure in torturing inmates, and was suspected of having lampshades made out of the skin of inmates.

Giancarlo Giannini stars in three other films Wertmuller made during this period: Love and Anarchy, The Seduction of Mimi and Swept Away.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075040/

The Lizards • Let's Talk About Men • Don't Sting the Mosquito • The Belle Starr Story • The Seduction of Mimi • Love and Anarchy • Everything Ready, Nothing Works • Swept Away by an Unusual Destiny in the Blue Sea of August • Seven Beauties • A Night Full of Rain • Blood Feud • A Joke of Destiny • Softly, Softly • Camorra (A Story of Streets, Women and Crime) • Summer Night, with Greek Profile, Almond Eyes and Scent of Basil • As Long as It's Love • The Tenth One in Hiding • Ciao, Professore! • The Nymph • The Blue Collar Worker and the Hairdresser in a Whirl of Sex and Politics • Ferdinando e Carolina • Too Much Romance... It's Time for Stuffed Peppers