Pier Paolo Pasolini (Vol 1)

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Film Description

Three films from Italian neo-realist Pier Paolo Pasolini, one of the most important filmmakers of world cinema. Features his debut film (from his own novel) Accattone, set in Rome's slums - a gritty first feature that explores the world of petty thieves and prostitutes. RoGoPag, a portmanteau film with contributions from Rosselini, Godard, Pasolini, and Gregoretti. Pasolini's segment, La Ricotta is a biting religious satire which angered the Church, who accused him of blasphemy and which led to a short prison sentence. Love Meetings (Comizi d'amore) is a documentary in which Pasolini wanders through Rome interviewing people about their attitides towards marriage, divorce, prostitution, homosexuality and infidelity.

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DVD Extras

3 discs; New paperback reprint of Pasolini's novel 'A Violent Life'.

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Review by James Oliver on 1st February 2007

Tartan inaugurate their very welcome Pasolini collection with three early works from the of the great outsider’s filmography. Cinema was a natural continuation of an artistic life that had begun as a poet and novelist and which would yet encompass theatre and painting. His brief (fifteen year) directing career was divisive and shocking; it was also frequently inspired.

He took the story his first film, Accatone, from his own novel. It takes us down to the lowest levels of Italian life, the underclass who live on the periphery of Rome. Vincenzo – ‘Accatone’ – is a pimp whose life disintegrates when his prize asset is jailed. To avoid destitution, the young hustler (played – or perhaps incarnated – by the cadaverous Franco Citti) sets about grooming a replacement but finds himself running into problems he had not foreseen.

Much influenced by the Neo-Realists and the French New Wave, Pasolini refuses to moralise or patronise, preferring just to show us what happens. He rejects cinematic tricks: the framing is almost primitive, the light direct, the acting unpolished. It’s a world away from La Dolce Vita, set in the same city at the same time. The only time Pasolini’s people could encounter Fellini’s characters would be when they were mugging them.

Less grungy than Accatone was Pasolini’s contribution to the portmanteau film Ro.Go.Pa.G (the title comes from its directors names: Rosselini, Godard, Pasolini and Gregoretti). La Ricotta is the highlight of the movie, a short and satiric look at religion, class and cinema. A film crew are trying to stage a biblical epic but they treat their extras, drawn from the Roman poor, in a very unchristian fashion. One of these benighted souls – Stracci – is eventually hoisted up on the cross, where he dies.

The Vatican was predictably outraged and had the movie banned. Pasolini got off with a suspended sentence for blasphemy. He would atone for it by making one of the most celebrated religious films, his adaptation of St. Matthew’s gospel (in which Christ is a typical Pasolini hero.) But before he went all respectable, he turned in the third and least of the films in this set, Comizi D’Amore, a documentary all about sex.

Or rather, it’s a documentary about attitudes to sex in Italy in 1963, about the attitudes to chastity, gender politics and homosexuality. Like a Mediterranean Dr. Kinsey, Pasolini bisects the country, interrogating his countrymen. Urban and rural, rich and poor, intellectual and artisan: they all seem thoroughly confused. It’s something of a period piece now but it is not without interest and points towards the territory Pasolini was steering towards in films like Theorem and The Decamaron.

He was moving away from strict realism towards the joyful filth of his ‘trilogy of life’ and the nihilism of Salo. The films in this collection show that his sensibility was in place from the start, even though the stories he told changed. However he addressed his audience, in whichever medium he chose, his voice was always that of a poet.

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Article - "Pier Paolo Pasolini" by Pasquale Iannone
Monday 2nd April 2007

The Gramscian Marxist poet, novelist and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975) is often described as a King Midas figure because of the skillful dexterity with which he shifted from one form of artistic expression to another. A vital, polemical presence in the cu...  View article in full

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