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Saturday Evening Movie Thread 03/23/2024 [TheJamesMadison]

Pier Paolo Pasolini

Pier Paolo Pasolini was controversial in Italy before he ever started making movies. Writing poetry from his youth, his first novel, Ragazzi di vita, led to lawsuits for obscenity from the Italian government. He entered the Italian film industry doing things like rewriting dialogue on Federico Fellini's Nights of Cabiria, providing a more realistic and lower-class patois, leaning heavily into "lower" Italian dialects, to the characters of prostitutes who populate the film. His first film as director, Accattone, was partially controversial for its heavy use of those same dialects, something completely lost on non-Italian viewers who rely on subtitles. The rest of the controversy was centered around material considered blasphemous.

His career would last another eleven narrative feature films (he would also direct a handful of documentaries on different subjects, sometimes just compiled footage of his efforts to get movies made), and they ran a real gamut. There's one of the greatest religious films ever made in The Gospel According to Matthew. There's a dual narrative film about the decadence and emptiness of the bourgeois classes contrasted with a tale of a medieval cannibal called Pigsty. There's also a trilogy of films called the Trilogy of Life that are adaptations of works by Boccaccio, Chaucer, and the anonymous author of A Thousand and One Nights. In addition, there are some adaptations of Greek Tragedy in Medea and Oedipus Rex.

Through all of this, Pasolini made these films his own. He would later disown the Trilogy of Life, saying that he was too concerned with financial success of the films than the artistic merit to the point where his own voice had been snuffed out, but I think it's still easy to see that they're decidedly Pasolini films. The ideas are still there, just muted and largely relegated to his selection of which of tales in the large volumes he chose to adapt. The ideas, though, stem from the fact that he was a Marxist atheist homosexual who hated Italy as it was, talked about abandoning his Italian citizenship completely, and only ever seemed to have any affection for the downtrodden masses that he almost never made central figures in his own films. It helped that he understood storytelling and the technical side of filmmaking really well on top of that.

Early Career

One thing I learned quickly while watching Pasolini's first two films (Accattone and Momma Roma) was to not call them Italian neo-realist. Italian neo-realism was formed by people like Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio de Sica, and they not only were defined by the production techniques of real-world locations and non-professional actors; they also shared a certain melancholic sentimentality, a trait that Pasolini hated and did not replicate in his own films. These two are films of tragedy and hard-edged looks at Italian life: attacks on the bourgeois as lazy and parasitic in the first and dreams of joining the bourgeois by the lower classes as marred by amoral and un-bourgeois, meaning that bourgeois existence is, at its core, a lie.

The difference between these first two films and his later films is that they're far less didactic in their delivery of the messages. You could watch these as just stories of two people (the pimp of the first and the prostitute of the second) struggling through the travails of poverty in a well-presented portrait of the poorer outskirts of Rome. It takes just the smallest amount of picking at the surface, though to see the Marxist critique of Italian society, though.

The one aspect of his filmmaking techniques here that most fit with the Italian neo-realists was the use of non-professional actors, with a certain ironic twist. All of the actors in his first film were non-professional, but the star of Accattone, Franco Citti, became a regular actor for him and even had a successful acting career that lasted until the late 90s (he's in The Godfather and The Godfather Part III even). He would use an established actress, Anna Magnani, as the central performer in Mamma Roma, a decision he would regret during filming since she was so big in her performance in contrast with the smaller, more naturalistic feel of the rest of the non-professional cast around her.

The Gospel, Myth, and Literature


Having met almost nothing but controversy throughout his career, especially from the more traditional and conservative sectors of Italian society up to and including the Catholic Church, his third film is as strict a telling of one of the gospels as one could possible fit into roughly 130 minutes of screentime. The Gospel According to Matthew was born of some time Pasolini spent in Assisi, stuck in his hotel room because the pope was visiting and tying up all traffic, leaving him to read the gospels through, choosing Matthew as the one that most aligned with his narrative sensibilities. He met with church officials to ensure that his take was in line with the religious tradition, though he didn't remove himself completely from those decisions. It was a conscious effort on his part to, as he put it, make a film so reverent that it "could be shown on Easter Sunday in all the parish cinemas in Italy and the world."

The film even begins with a joyous dedication to Pope John XXIII.

How could a man so dedicated to Marxism, who had been in public opposition to the Catholic Church for a variety of reasons, and an atheist bring together the elements to create a reverent portrait of the life of Jesus Christ? Well, because he was concerned with telling the story first and foremost, not changing it to meet his own ideology. You can see this in his mythic films and the Trilogy of Life as well (though, as previously mentioned, his ideology isn't completely subsumed). The Gospel According to Matthew is proof that Pasolini was a very good storyteller without considering his ideological bent.

The one film that feels more removed from his ideological concerns that still seems to concern Pasolini personally is Oedipus Rex, the film he called his most personal. Now, as a homosexual, I don't think he had feelings of that sort for his mother, but, while the bulk of the film is shot like it happens in the ancient past (using locations in Morocco), the bookends of the film are set in 1920s and contemporary Italy. The early section is all about how much he hated his father, an Italian military officer (who reportedly once saved Benito Mussolini's life). The last section shows Oedipus wandering the streets with a flute, unheard and abused by the few who notice him, only protected by his faithful companion played by Ninetto Davoli, Pasolini's real-life lover with whom he lived for a decade.

Ideology


As well established, Pasolini was a full-blown Marxist, and nothing was going to shake him of those beliefs. His ideological films (most of them, to be honest) are never positive affirmations of the new communist future awaiting humanity should they embrace the true utopianism. No, he wasn't even interested in portraying the New Socialist Man, a narrative conceit put out by the Frankfurt School to create flawless main characters who represented that utopianism (Dalton Trumbo used this a lot and his version of the New Socialist Man can be seen clearly in movies like Spartacus). His characters were awful, terrible people (Accattone is a pimp and, over the course of his film, forces an innocent woman into prostitution) because they were mainly critiques of the bourgeois. Accattone, for instance, is obviously meant to be part of a class that simply feeds off the work of others, his effort to actually work one day in his life late in the film ending in such failure that he can only resort to actual thievery to try and survive any longer.

Pasolini seems to have gone through a massive ideological crisis in the mid-60s, though. The event that caused him such consternation was the death of Palmiro Togliatti, the leader of the Italian Communist Party (an organization, by the way, that kicked Pasolini out because of his homosexuality). I haven't read much in terms of biography of him (he's actually well-documented with a good number of texts having been written about his life and work), so this is only based on his films themselves. However, it's really hard to miss when you consider the actual content of The Hawks and the Sparrows.

That film has one of Pasolini's images that edges into the blasphemous (there is a central trio of a father, son, and...talking crow who is described as "a left-wing intellectual of the kind found living before Palmiro Togliatti's death"). That crow in the parenthetical is obviously a stand-in for Pasolini on a certain level, and the marker in the intertitle that introduces him (that quote is directly from the film) marks Togliatti's death explicitly. The film even includes footage from his funeral late in a montage. That death marked a change in his thinking which didn't lead to him denouncing Marxism or communism. Instead, it made his existing habit of critique of the bourgeois even more stringent in form.

That would continue through Teorema (meaning Theorem) and Pigsty. The first is the more interesting and successful, introducing a bourgeois family (its father figure owns a factory who gives it away in the prologue that probably actually happens late in the film, though it's never given direct context) whose lives are completely undone by the introduction of a mysterious visitor played by Terrence Stamp. He awakens them (mostly sexually), and then, when the Visitor vanishes for no reason, the family simply descends into various forms of madness to show their lives had been empty without meaning. The second, Pigsty is more narratively ambitious with dual narratives, one set in medieval times, mostly wordless, about a cannibal, and the other is a fast-talking tale of a bourgeois family in West Germany dealing with the father's efforts to destroy his rival and the son's descent into a catatonic state when his girlfriend doesn't stay by his side (this is heavily inspired by Godard's La Chinoise). Both solely exist as critiques of the bourgeois, and they are only saved at all by the fact that Pasolini was just really good at making movies (I don't think Pigsty quite comes together, but it's got some good laughs along the way).

All Roads Lead to Salo


After the Trilogy of Life, his only real effort at commercial success that did actually work quite well, Pasolini was set on creating a follow up in the form of the Trilogy of Death, the first of which was Salo: Or 120 Days of Sodom based on the work by the Marquis de Sade. One of the reasons I was so interested in exploring the work of Pasolini was getting to this film mostly because it's such an interesting contrast to The Gospel According to Matthew. The earlier film was an earnest and straightforward depiction of the life of Christ done so well that it really could be shown in all the churches of Italy and the world on Easter Sunday. The latter film is...very different.

Salo tells the story of four Libertines who seemingly hold power within the Fascist Party of Italy in the latter years of WWII. They kidnap eighteen young men and women, take them to a remote villa where they follow through on any perversions that come to them, keeping the eighteen in tight boxes of behavior that, if they deviate, will lead to punishment. Supported by some older boys in military uniforms and a handful of older women (all prostitutes), they tell stories of debauchery while engaging is disgusting, sickening acts on screen, including an extended section about the joys of eating feces. It's just straight up revolting.

Within the context of Pasolini's career, especially after his frustration with the financial success of the Trilogy of Life and its relationship to his feeling that he had pushed aside his own creative voice in pursuit of it, Salo makes a lot of sense. It's a continuation of the anti-bourgeois and anti-Fascist sentiments that had colored his career since Accattone. In the face of his ideological crisis and a reaction to his voice being pushed aside, of course the critique would only get increasingly strident in form. It's hard to imagine where else he would have gone had he not been murdered (most likely by a young man he was trying to pick up, never mind the Italian left's desperate efforts to turn him into a martyr for their cause), but it's hard to imagine his films becoming more accessible. Considering his deep affection for Jean-Luc Godard's work, it's easy to imagine Pasolini following a similar path where he could get funding for his very small movies while no one would really care or note their releases. Godard was making movies until he died last year (he still has, apparently, a couple left to release posthumously), but his era of serious attention ended in the 70s. I could see Pasolini, had he not died, doing the same thing.

Recommendations...?


That's hard because, well, Pasolini was a good filmmaker, but he was also deeply ideological while his final film devolved into thinly veiled and largely uninteresting shock (I genuinely hate Salo, though it does have its defenders for some reason). Is there stuff to get out of this?

Well, the obvious start is The Gospel According to Matthew. For those with very long memories, I've actually recommended it before, four or five years ago, and it's just as great now as when I first discovered it then. From there, I'd have to get a bit more prescriptive. The one film outside of that first recommendation that I'd be most willing to suggest to most people is The Hawks and the Sparrows. Yes, it's ideological and requires some knowledge on who the heck Togliatti was, but it's really fun to watch, helped in no small part by one of the most playful scores Ennio Morricone ever wrote.

Outside of those two, however, it gets far more narrow. The Trilogy of Life would be largely general audience type films, except they're FULL of sex and nudity, and not just bewbage (it falls short of any actual penetration, which is nice). His first two films (Accattone and Momma Roma) are two of his best, but they're about terrible people in general. I'd recommend them to someone already comfortable with 60s style European cinema. The last one I would consider would be Oedipus Rex which has that large central section that's just a good retelling of the play by Sophocles except it has those bookends that require explanation.

So, it was an interesting run. I saw some new films I liked that I'd never seen before. I did have to revisit Salo, which was a struggle, but I also got to revisit The Gospel According to Matthew which was a joy.

Movies of Today

Opening in Theaters:

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire

Movies I Saw This Fortnight:

Pigsty (Rating 2.5/4) Full Review "There was real thought that went into the film's construction, but Pasolini's hatred was the motivating factor of the film, not telling a story." [Personal Collection]

Medea (Rating 2.5/4) Full Review "Seriously, twenty minutes or so on the cutting room floor, and I think Pasolini has a well assembled retelling of the ancient story. At this length, though? It just doesn't quite do what it needs to." [Personal Collection]

The Canterbury Tales (Rating 3/4) Full Review "It's light. It's fun. It's colorful. I had a good time with it." [Personal Collection]

Arabian Nights (Rating 3/4) Full Review "Still, it was light and amusing." [Personal Collection]

Salo or 120 Days of Sodom (Rating 0.5/4) Full Review "So, it's intentionally repellent, but it's still repellent. It's an awful spectacle with little to say and little to offer an audience. It's a bad film. It may be intentionally a bad film, but it's still a bad film." [Archive.org]

Conan the Barbarian (Rating 3.5/4) Full Review Still, the overall package is something that I just completely gravitate towards. The music. The magic. The adventure. It has just about everything I want from a fantasy film." [Personal Collection]

Conan the Destroyer (Rating 2.5/4) Full Review "So, it's a mixed bag, and I feel like I like it a bit more than I should. It's not a good film, but I get a kick out of a good chunk of it." [Personal Collection]

Conan the Barbarian (Rating 2/4) Full Review "It's not good, but it's really not terrible. It's okay. There have been far worse adaptations of Howard's work. This is no Kull the Conqueror." [Personal Collection]

Contact

Email any suggestions or questions to thejamesmadison.aos at symbol gmail dot com.
I've also archived all the old posts here, by request. I'll add new posts a week after they originally post at the HQ.

My next post will be on 4/13, and it will talk about the films directed by George A. Romero.