Synopsis:
‘A historian is called to a creepy old castle to help a strange old widow catalogue her erotic antiquities. He then meets her dark, seductive daughter and finds he is falling under her erotic spell. Incapable of forcing himself to leave, he spirals helplessly into their strange supernatural world.’ Read More »
Quote:
La Ricotta (starring Orson Welles) represents a key moment in Pasolini’s career. This complex work marks a stylistic advance over his earlier films and with it, Pasolini comes of age as a man of the cinema. Although La Ricotta is an outcry against the betrayal of religion, it was perceived as blasphemous by the right-wing homophobic political enemies of Pasolini. He was put on trial and charged with “insulting the religion of the state,” a Fascist law that was still on the books. Pasolini was sentenced to four months in prison, eventually amnestied, and all of RoGoPaG was banned. La Ricotta is a dazzling amalgam of trenchant social satire, neo-realism, pathos, and burlesque comedy by the man Susan Sontag has called “indisputably the most remarkable figure to have emerged in Italian arts and letters since the Second World War.” Read More »
Description: This consists of four short films by different directors. Rosselini’s ‘Chastity’ (‘Illibatezza’) deals with an attractive air hostess who receives the unwelcome attentions of a middle aged American. Godard’s ‘New World’ (‘Il Nuovo Mondo’) illustrates a post-apocalypse world the same as the pre-apocalyptic one but for an enigmatic change in attitude in most people, including the central character’s girlfriend. In Pasolini’s ‘Curd Cheese’ (‘La Ricotta’), a lavish film about the life of Jesus Christ is being made in a poor area. The impoverished people subject themselves to various indignities in the name of moviemaking in order to win a little food. Finally comes Gregoretti’s ‘Free Range Chicken’ (‘Il Pollo Ruspante’) in which a family of the materialist culture inadvertantly illustrate the cynical, metallic voiced doctrine of a top sales theorist. Read More »