Pier Paolo Pasolini

“La Rabbia” employs documentary footage (from the 1950s) and accompanying commentary to attempt to answer the existential question, Why are our lives characterized by discontent, anguish, and fear? The film is in two completely separate parts, and the directors of these respective sections, left-wing Pier Paolo Pasolini and conservative Giovanni Guareschi, offer the viewer contrasting analyses of and prescriptions for modern society. Part I, by Pasolini, is a denunciation of the offenses of Western culture, particularly those against colonized Africa. It is at the same time a chronicle of the liberation and independence of the former African colonies, portraying these peoples as the new protagonists of the world stage, holding up Marxism as their “salvation,” and suggesting that their “innocent ferocity” will be the new religion of the era. Guareschi’s part, by contrast, constitutes a defense of Western civilization and a word of hope, couched in traditional Christian terms, for man’s…Read More »

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From sun-sparkled Naples to muddy medieval England for chapter two of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Trilogy of Life — and with all the cornholing, golden showers, and silent-movie mugging Chaucer left out. The most amorphously anecdotal of the three, it’s also the one where the discrepancy between the movies’ notional life-affirmation and the brackish despairing of their execution emerges most grotesquely, every stab at “joyous” sexuality followed by the self-reflex of grotty degradation. Read More »

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The poet as scrounger-pimp-saint, his life and death. “Long live us thieves… we always know where to go.” Accattone “the cardboard man” (Franco Citti) in the Roman lower depths of dirty sidewalks and angelic statues, a terrain at once squalid and exalted. He ambles around the slums, soaks in his own thick mythology, is reminded of shame by the wife he abandoned (Paola Guidi), and apologizes to his son with one hand while stealing from him with the other. Madonna (Adele Cambria) at home with armfuls of children and Mary Magdalene (Silvana Corsini) in the streets, beaten up for kicks by idle mugs with peculiarly ethereal voices. In this netherworld of exploitation and debasement, a fair muse (Franca Pasut) and a prophecy (“You won’t even have your eyes to cry with”). If Pier Paolo Pasolini’s first film displays the appearance of neo-realism, it’s only as a launching pad for the harshest, most stylized assembly of the profane and the sacred; if his terse panning shots bring to mind Cimabue and other old masters, it’s only as a way to bend them. (The central image finds the antihero wetting his face in the ocean, grinding it into the sand and offering it to the camera, a grinning fresco peppered with birdshot.)Read More »

Anna Magnani is Mamma Roma, a middle-aged prostitute who attempts to extricate herself from her sordid past for the sake of her son. Filmed in the great tradition of Italian neorealism, Mamma Roma offers an unflinching look at the struggle for survival in postwar Italy, and highlights director Pier Paolo Pasolini’s lifelong fascination with the marginalized and dispossessed. Though banned upon its release in Italy for obscenity, today Mamma Roma remains a classic, featuring a powerhouse performance by one of cinema’s greatest actresses and offering a glimpse at a country’s most controversial director in the process of finding his style.Read More »

Synopsis:
The film consists of six short stories created by different directors, but all the stories share one thing: a warm irony to current events.

Review:
Italian PORTMANTEAU film, a bit uneven.

Segment four by Pier Paolo Pasolini is by far the best; a completely MINDBLOWING and DERANGED rendering of OTHELLO played in a puppet theatre with human marionettes!
TOTÒ has the main role in this, and also in segment 2, where he hates Italian beatniks and stalks them as THE SUNDAY MONSTER! Both segments are very funny in completely different ways, but segment 2 would probably not have worked without Totò.
Segment 5 is completely unlike everything else; four minutes short, based on a animated cartoon by Pino Zac, and with Silvana Mangano as the Queen of England, and with guest appearances by James Bond (model Sean Connery)! The other three segments are fully watchable, although not so FAR OUT as number 2, 4 and 5.Read More »

Synopsis:
Love and Anger is a collection of five stories that are the handiwork of directors that have made names for themselves in decidedly different ways among the annals of foreign cinema. The heavy hitters of the time are all on board, including Bernardo Bertolucci (The Last Emperor, Partner), Marco Bellocchio (Devil in the Flesh), Carlo Lizzani (Requiescant), Pier Paolo Pasolini (Salo), and, a huge treat, the legendary Jean-Luc Godard (Band of Outsiders, Breathless). Most of these films are extremely surreal, but they all have political undertones. This actually works out quite well, as even if you aren’t familiar with the political climate in Italy and France during the 1960s, you can revel in these masters’ liberal use of inventive imagery, much of which never comes completely together in a standard narrative structure. The actors come from a pair of renowned theater groups: the Living Theater and Andy Warhol Factory, and include Julian Beck, who made his mark in Hollywood as the creepy preacher in Poltergeist II.Read More »

from imdb:
Along a rocky, barren coastline, Jesus begins teaching, primarily using parables. He attracts disciples; he’s stern, brusque, and demanding. He comes to bring a sword, not peace, he says. He’s in a hurry, moving from place to place near the Sea of Galilee, sometimes attracting a multitude, sometimes being driven away. His parables often take on the powers that be, so he and his teachings come to the attention of the Pharisees, the chief priests, and elders. They conspire to have him arrested, beaten, tried, and crucified, just as he prophesied to his followers. After he dies, he appears to his disciples and gives them final instructions.Read More »

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Pasolini’s ‘Decameron’ at the Film Festival

Pier Paolo Pasolini, the Italian director, has always been something of a puzzle for American critics, not simply because we have to reconcile his announced Marxism with what appears to be a kind of reformed Christianity (as reflected by the neo-realistic “The Gospel According to St. Matthew,” as well as by the austerely allegorical “Teorema”), but because he forces us to keep shifting critical gears. No three Pasolinis are ever quite alike. At best, they come in pairs, like “Oedipus Rex” and “Medea,” neither of which have yet been released here.

There is, however, a peculiar kind of romanticism throughout all of his films. It is a middle-class romanticism that idealizes the spiritual and emotional freedom that Pasolini sees in what we used to call The Common Man, who, in slightly more straightforward, class-conscious Europe, is still The Peasant. As if he were some medieval maiden locked in a tower, Pasolini seems to long for the freedom to do what the simple folk do, which, to Pasolini, evokes sexual liberation as much as anything else.

In none of his films has this been more apparent than in his marvelous new work, “The Decameron,” which is as close to being uninhibited and joyful as anything he’s ever done.
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The Hawks and the Sparrows (Italian: Uccellacci e uccellini, literally Bad Birds and Little Birds) is a 1966 Italian film directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini. It was entered into the 1966 Cannes Film Festival.

The movie is a post-neorealist story about Totò, the beloved stone-faced clown of Italian folk-stories.

Originally Uccellacci e Uccellini, The Hawks and the Sparrows was adapted by director Pier Paolo Pasolini from his own novel. Italian comedian Toto plays a dual role, as “himself” and 12th century monk Brother Ciccillo. In modern times, Toto and his son Ninetto Davoli come across a talking crow who insists upon asking them where they’re going. The answer, it turns out, is eight centuries into the past, where Toto and Davoli become monks, employed by Francis of Assisi to convert the birds of the world to Christianity. Unfortunately, every sparrow that they win over to God is devoured by a hawk. Back in the present, Toto and Davoli face a similar situation when their landlord threatens them with eviction. After various and sundry misadventures, the two human protagonists, growing weary of the philosophical crow’s loquaciousness, eat the bird and move on, prepared to face whatever life brings them without the “help” of their feathered friend. The symbolism in The Hawks and the Sparrows is so obvious as to be funny, which was Pasolini’s intention all along.
Hal EricksonRead More »