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{{Short description|Italian writer, filmmaker, poet, and intellectual (1922–1975)}} | |||
{{redirect|Pasolini|other people with that surname|Pasolini (surname)}} | |||
{{Redirect|Pasolini|other people with that surname|Pasolini (surname)|the 2014 film|Pasolini (film)}} | |||
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{{Infobox writer <!-- for more information see ] --> | {{Infobox writer <!-- for more information see ] --> | ||
| name = Pier Paolo Pasolini | | name = Pier Paolo Pasolini | ||
| image = |
| image = PierPaoloPasolini.jpg | ||
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| caption = Pasolini in 1964 | ||
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| pseudonym = | ||
| birth_date = {{birth date|df=y|1922|3|5}} | |||
| pseudonym = | |||
| birth_place = ], Kingdom of Italy | |||
| birth_date = {{Birth date|1922|3|5|df=y}} | |||
| death_date = {{death date and age|df=y|1975|11|2|1922|3|5}} | |||
| birth_place = ], ] | |||
| death_place = ], Italy | |||
| death_date = {{Death date and age|1975|11|2|1922|3|5|df=y}} | |||
| occupation = {{hlist|Film director|novelist|poet|intellectual|journalist}} | |||
| death_place = ], ], Italy | |||
| genre = | |||
| occupation = Film director, novelist, poet, intellectual, journalist, linguist, philosopher | |||
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| movement = | ||
| signature = Pier Paolo Pasolini signature.svg | |||
| movement = | |||
| alma_mater = ] | |||
| notableworks ='']'' <br> '']'' <br> '']'' | |||
| signature = Pier Paolo Pasolini signature.svg | |||
}} | }} | ||
'''Pier Paolo Pasolini''' ({{IPA-it|ˈpjɛr ˈpaolo pazoˈlini|lang}}; 5 March 1922 – 2 November 1975) was an ] ], ], ] and ]. Pasolini distinguished himself as a poet, ], ], ], ], ], ], ] and ] ], ], ] and ]. He demonstrated a unique and extraordinary cultural versatility, becoming a highly controversial figure in the process. While his work remains controversial to this day, in the years since his death Pasolini has come to be valued by many as a visionary thinker and a major figure in Italian literature and art. American literary critic ] considers Pasolini to be a major European poet and a major voice in 20th-century poetry, including his works in his collection of the ]. | |||
'''Pier Paolo Pasolini''' ({{IPA|it|ˈpjɛr ˈpaːolo pazoˈliːni|lang}}; 5 March 1922 – 2 November 1975) was an Italian poet, film director, writer, actor and playwright. He is considered one of the defining ]s in 20th-century ], influential both as an artist and a political figure.<ref>{{cite web |title=Il Dissenso di un Intellettuale: Pier Paolo Pasolini, a Cen |url=https://news-art.it/news/il-dissenso-di-un-intellettuale---pier-paolo-pasolini--a-cento-anni-dalla-nascita--.htm |access-date=17 August 2022 |website=news-art.it |language=it-IT}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last=Quarti |first=Matilde |date=18 November 2017 |title=La vita e i libri di Pier Paolo Pasolini, intellettuale corsaro |url=https://www.illibraio.it/news/dautore/pier-paolo-pasolini-una-vita-violenta-670175/ |access-date=17 August 2022 |website=ilLibraio.it |language=it}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |date=15 November 2021 |title=Pier Paolo Pasolini, l'uomo, l'artista, l'intellettuale: un volume in digitale dell'Espresso |url=https://www.repubblica.it/cultura/2021/11/15/news/pier_paolo_pasolini_l_uomo_l_artista_l_intellettuale_un_volume_in_digitale_dell_espresso-325751209/ |access-date=17 August 2022 |website=la Repubblica |language=it}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |date=27 February 2022 |title=Pasolini 100 anni intellettuale sempre più profetico - Libri - Approfondimenti |url=https://www.ansa.it/sito/notizie/cultura/libri/approfondimenti/2022/02/27/ansa/pasolini-100-anni-intellettuale-sempre-piu-profetico_a38cd552-4019-4ec2-953e-f486bf9607d4.html |access-date=17 August 2022 |website=Agenzia ANSA |language=it}}</ref> He is known for directing ], the films from Trilogy of Life ('']'', '']'' and '']'') and ]. | |||
==Biography== | |||
A controversial personality due to his straightforward style, Pasolini's legacy remains contentious. Openly ] while also a vocal advocate for ] ], ], and ] in his youth, Pasolini became an avowed ] shortly after the end of ].<ref name="berlinale 1971" /> He began voicing extremely harsh criticism of Italian ] and what he saw as the ], ], and greed-driven ] taking over ].<ref>. College Film & Media Studies. Retrieved 2 November 2021.</ref> As a filmmaker, Pasolini often juxtaposed socio-political polemics with an extremely graphic and critical examination of ] sexual matters. A prominent protagonist of the ] intellectual scene during the post-war era, Pasolini became an established and major figure in ] and ]. | |||
===Early life=== | |||
Pasolini was born in Bologna, traditionally one of the most leftist of Italian cities. He was the son of a ] of the ], Carlo Alberto, and an elementary school teacher, Susanna Colussi. His parents married in 1921, Pasolini was born in 1922 and was named after his paternal uncle. His family moved to ] in 1923 and, two years later, to ], where another son, Guidalberto, was born. In 1926, Pasolini's father was arrested for gambling debts, and his mother took the children to her family's house in ], in the ] region. That same year, his father saved ]'s life during ]'s assassination attempt. | |||
Pasolini's unsolved and extremely brutal abduction, torture, and murder at ] in November 1975 prompted an outcry in Italy, where it continues to be a matter of heated debate. Recent leads by Italian ] investigators suggest a ] by the ], a ] with close links to ], as the most likely cause.<ref name=":0">{{cite web|title= Plea to reopen Pasolini murder file presented|url=https://www.ansa.it/english/news/lifestyle/arts/2023/03/03/plea-to-reopen-pasolini-murder-file-presented_823996a4-df79-4d90-be86-434d0010017a.html|date=March 3, 2023|website=ANSA}}</ref> | |||
Pasolini began writing poems at the age of seven, inspired by the natural beauty of Casarsa. One of his early influences was the work of ]. In 1931, his father was transferred to Idria in the ] (now ] in ]);<ref>http://www.rtvslo.si/kultura/drugo/ste-vedeli-da-je-pier-paolo-pasolini-v-otrostvu-nekaj-casa-zivel-v-idriji/294028</ref> in 1933 they moved again to ] in ], and later to ] and ]. Pasolini found it difficult to adapt to all these moves, though in the meantime he enlarged his poetry and literature readings (], ], ], ], ]) and left behind the religious fervour of his early years. In the Reggio Emilia high school, he met his first true friend, Luciano Serra. The two met again in Bologna, where Pasolini spent seven years while completing high school: here he cultivated new passions, including ]. With other friends, including Ermes Parini, Franco Farolfi, Elio Meli, he formed a group dedicated to literary discussions. | |||
== Biography == | |||
In 1939 Pasolini graduated and entered the Literature College of the ], discovering new themes such as ] and ] of ]s. He also frequented the local cinema club. Pasolini always showed his friends a virile and strong exterior, totally hiding his interior travail. He took part in the ] government's culture and sports competitions. In 1941, together with ], ] and others, he attempted to publish a poetry magazine, but the attempt failed due to paper shortages. In his poems of this period, Pasolini started to include fragments in ], which he had learned from his mother. | |||
=== Early life === | |||
Pier Paolo Pasolini was born in ], Italy. He was the son of elementary-school teacher Susanna Colussi, named after her great-grandmother,<ref>Frank Northen Magill, ''Critical survey of poetry: foreign language series'', Salem Press, 1984, p. 1145</ref> and Carlo Alberto Pasolini, a lieutenant in the ]; they had married in 1921. Pasolini was born in 1922 and named after a paternal uncle. His family moved to ] in 1923, then to ] in 1925, where their second son, Guidalberto, was born. In 1926, Pasolini's father was arrested for gambling debts. His mother moved with the children to her family's home in ], in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region. In that same year, his father first detained, then identified ] as the would-be assassin of ] following his assassination attempt.{{Citation needed|reason=Is it an established fact that he saved it, or is this merely based on his claim of having done so? There appears to be conflicting testimony, such as by Marshal Francesco Burgio.|date=September 2014}} Carlo Alberto was persuaded of the virtues of ].<ref>{{cite book |last=Siciliano |first=Enzo |date=2014 |title=Pasolini; Una vida tormentosa |publisher=Torres de Papel|page=37|isbn=978-84-943726-4-3}}</ref> | |||
Pasolini began writing poems at age seven, inspired by the natural beauty of Casarsa. One of his early influences was the work of ]. His father was transferred to ] in the ] (now in Slovenia) in 1931;<ref>. Rtvslo.si (20 October 2012). Retrieved 22 May 2014.</ref> in 1933 they moved again to ] in Lombardy, and later to ] and ]. Pasolini found it difficult to adapt to all these dislocations, although he enlarged his poetry and literature readings (], ], ], ], ]) and left behind the religious fervour of his early years. In the Reggio Emilia high school, he met his first true friend, Luciano Serra. The two met again in Bologna, where Pasolini spent seven years completing high school. Here he cultivated new passions, including ]. With other friends, including Ermes Parini, Franco Farolfi, Elio Meli, he formed a group dedicated to literary discussions. | |||
=== Early poetry === | |||
After the summer in Casarsa, in 1941 Pasolini published at his own expense a collection of poems in ], ''Versi a Casarsa''. The work was noted and appreciated by intellectuals and critics such as ], ] and ]. His pictures had also been well received. Pasolini was chief editor of the ''Il Setaccio'' ("The Sieve") magazine, but was fired after conflicts with the director, who was aligned with the ]. A trip to Germany helped him also to discover the "provincial" status of ] in that era. These experiences led Pasolini to rethink his opinion about the cultural politics of Fascism and to switch gradually to a ] position. | |||
In 1939, Pasolini graduated and entered the Literature College of the ], discovering new themes such as ] and ] of ]s. He also frequented the local cinema club. Pasolini always showed his friends a virile and strong exterior, totally hiding his interior turmoil. In his poems of this period, Pasolini started to include fragments in ], a minority language he did not speak but learned after he had begun to write poetry in it. "I learnt it as a sort of mystic act of love, a kind of '']'', like the ]."<ref>Stack, O. (1969). ''Pasolini on Pasolini'', pp. 15–17, London: Thames and Hudson.<!-- ISSN/ISBN needed --></ref> In 1943, he founded with fellow students the ''Academiuta della lenga furlana'' (Academy of the Friulan Language).<ref>Thompson, N.S. (1981), ''Pier Paolo Pasolini: Poet and Prophet'', in Murray, Glen (ed.), '']'' No. 7, Winter 1981 - 82, pp. 30 - 32.</ref> As a young adult, Pasolini identified as an ].<ref>Guy Flatley, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160303172047/http://www.moviecrazed.com/outpast/pasolini.html |date=3 March 2016}}, 1969, located at Moviecrazed.com (accessed 25 April 2008).</ref> | |||
In 1942, the family took shelter in Casarsa, considered a more tranquil place to wait for the conclusion of the ], a decision common among Italian military families. Here, for the first time, Pasolini had to face the ] he had suppressed during his ] years. He wrote: "A continuous perturbation without images or words beats at my temples and obscures me".{{Citation needed|date=December 2010}} | |||
In the waning years of ], Pasolini was ] into the ].<ref name="poetry foundation"> ]. Retrieved May 9, 2024.</ref> After his regiment was ] by the ] following ], he escaped and fled to the small town of ] where he remained for several years.<ref name="poetry foundation"/> | |||
In the weeks before the 8 September ], Pasolini was ]. He was captured and imprisoned by the ]. He managed to escape disguised as a ], and found his way to Casarsa. Here he joined a group of other young fans of the Friulan language who wanted to give Casarsa Friulan a status equal to that of ], the official regional standard. From May 1944 they issued a magazine entitled ''Stroligùt di cà da l'aga''. In the meantime, Casarsa suffered Allied bombardments and forced enrollments by the ], as well as ] activity. | |||
=== Early poetry === | |||
Pasolini tried to remain apart from these events. He and his mother taught students unable to reach the schools in ] or ]. He experienced his first ] love for one of his students. At the same time, a ]n schoolgirl, Pina Kalč, was falling in love with Pasolini.{{Citation needed|date=November 2012}} On 12 February 1945 his brother Guido was killed in an ambush. Six days later Pasolini and others founded the Friulan Language Academy (''Academiuta di lenga furlana''). In the same year Pasolini joined the Association for the Autonomy of Friuli. He graduated after completing a final ] about ]'s works. | |||
] | |||
In 1942, Pasolini published at his own expense a collection of poems in Friulan, ''Poesie a Casarsa'', which he had written at the age of eighteen. The work was noted and appreciated by such intellectuals and critics as ], ] and Antonio Russi. Pasolini's pictures had also been well received. He was chief editor of a magazine called ''Il Setaccio'' ('The Sieve'), but was fired after conflicts with the director, who was aligned with the Fascist regime. A trip to Germany helped him also to perceive the "provincial" status of ] in that period. These experiences led Pasolini to revise his opinion about the cultural politics of Fascism and to switch gradually to a ] position. | |||
Pasolini's family took shelter in Casarsa, considered a more tranquil place to wait for the conclusion of the ], a decision common among Italian military families. Here he joined a group of other young enthusiasts of the Friulan language who wanted to give ] Friulan a status equal to that of ], the official regional standard. From May 1944, they issued a magazine entitled ''Stroligùt di cà da l'aga''. In the meantime, Casarsa suffered ] bombardments and forced enlistments by the ], as well as ] activity. | |||
In 1946 Pasolini published a small ], ''I Diarii'' ("The Diaries"), with the Academiuta. In October he travelled to ]. The following May he began the so-called ''Quaderni Rossi'', handwritten in old school exercise books with red covers. He completed a drama in Italian, ''Il Cappellano''. His poetry collection, ''I Pianti'' ("The cries"), was also published by the Academiuta. | |||
Pasolini tried to distance himself from these events. Starting in October 1943, Pasolini, his mother and other colleagues taught students unable to reach the schools in ] or Udine. This educational workshop was considered illegal and broke up in February 1944.<ref>{{cite book |last=Martellini |first=Luigi |date=2006 |title=Pier Paolo Pasolini; Retrato de un intelectual |location=Valencia |publisher=Universidad de Valencia |page=28 |isbn=978-84-370-7928-8}}</ref> It was here that Pasolini had his first experience of homosexual attraction to one of his students.{{citation needed|date=February 2016}} His brother Guido, aged 19, joined the ] and their ], taking to the bush near Slovenia. On 12 February 1945, Guido was killed in an ambush planted by the ] serving in the lines of ]'s ]n guerrillas. This devastated Pasolini and his mother.<ref>Martelini, L. 2006, p. 29</ref> | |||
=== Relationship with the Italian Communist Party === | |||
On 26 January 1947 Pasolini wrote a controversial declaration for the front page of the newspaper ''Libertà'': "In our opinion, we think that currently only Communism is able to provide a new culture." The controversy was partly due to the fact he was still not a member of the ] (PCI). | |||
Six days after his brother's death, Pasolini and others founded the Friulan Language Academy (''Academiuta di lenga furlana''). Meanwhile, on account of Guido's death, Pasolini's father returned to Italy from his detention period in November 1945, settling in Casarsa. That same month, Pasolini graduated from university after completing a final thesis about the work of ] (1855–1912), an Italian poet and classical scholar.<ref>Martelini, L. 2006, p. 33</ref> | |||
He was also planning to extend the work of the Academiuta to other ] literatures and knew the exiled ] poet, ]. After his adherence to the PCI, he took part in several demonstrations. In May 1949, Pasolini attended the Peace Congress in ]. Observing the struggles of workers and peasants, and watching the clashes of protesters with Italian police, he began to create his first novel. | |||
In 1946, Pasolini published a small poetry collection, ''I Diarii'' ('The Diaries'), with the Academiuta. In October he traveled to Rome. The following May he began the so-called ''Quaderni Rossi'', handwritten in old school exercise books with red covers. He completed a drama in Italian, ''Il Cappellano''. His poetry collection, ''I Pianti'' ('The cries'), was also published by the Academiuta. | |||
In October of the same year, Pasolini was charged with the corruption of minors and obscene acts in public places. As a result, he was expelled by the Udine section of the Communist Party and lost the teaching job he had obtained the previous year in Valvasone. Left in a difficult situation, in January 1950 Pasolini moved to Rome with his mother. | |||
=== Rome === | |||
He later described this period of his life as very difficult. "I came to Rome from the Friulan countryside. Unemployed for many years; ignored by everybody; driven by the fear to be not as life needed to be". Instead of asking for help from other writers, Pasolini preferred to go his own way. He found a job as a worker in the ] studios and sold his books in the 'bancarelle' ("sidewalk shops") of Rome. Finally, through the help of the ]-language poet ], he found a job as a teacher in ], a suburb of the capital. | |||
In January 1950, Pasolini moved to Rome with his mother Susanna to start a new life. He was acquitted of two indecency charges in 1950 and 1952.<ref name="Martelini, L. 2006, p. 48"/> After one year sheltered in a maternal uncle's flat next to ], Pasolini and his 59-year-old mother moved to a run-down suburb called ], next to a prison, living there for three years; he transferred his Friulan countryside inspiration to this Roman suburb, one of the infamous ''borgate'' where poor ] immigrants lived, often in horrendous sanitary and social conditions. Instead of asking for help from other writers, Pasolini preferred to go his own way. | |||
Pasolini found a job working in the ] film studios and sold his books in the ''bancarelle'' ('sidewalk shops') of Rome. In 1951, with the help of the ]-language poet Vittorio Clemente, he found a job as a secondary school teacher in ], just outside the capital. He had a long commute involving two train changes and earned a meagre salary of 27,000 ]. | |||
In these years Pasolini transferred his Friulan countryside inspiration to Rome's suburbs, the infamous ''borgate'' where poor ] immigrants lived in often horrendous sanitary and social conditions. | |||
] in the late 1950s]] | |||
=== Success and charges === | |||
] ] at the ] in 1964]] | |||
In 1954, Pasolini, who now worked for the literary section of Italian state radio, left his teaching job and moved to the Monteverde quarter, publishing ''La meglio gioventù'', his first important collection of dialect poems. His first novel, '']'' (English: ''Hustlers''), was published in 1955. The work had great success but was poorly received by the PCI establishment and, most importantly, by the Italian government. It initiated a lawsuit{{Specify|What was he charged with?|date=July 2011}} against Pasolini and his editor, Garzanti. Though totally exonerated of any charge, Pasolini became a victim of insinuations, especially by the ]. | |||
] in 1966]] | |||
== Career == | |||
In 1957, together with ], Pasolini collaborated on ]'s film '']'', writing dialogue for the ] parts. In 1960 he made his debut as an actor in '']'', and co-wrote '']''. | |||
{{Refimprove section|date=November 2021}} | |||
=== Writing === | |||
His first film as director and screenwriter is '']'' of 1961, again set in Rome's marginal quarters. The movie aroused controversy and scandal. In 1963, the episode "La ricotta", included in the collective movie '']'', was censored and Pasolini was tried for offence to the Italian state. | |||
<!-- Please don't limit the list to English versions or works available in English. This is an international encyclopedia.--> | |||
In 1954, Pasolini, who now worked for the literary section of Cinecittà, left his teaching job and moved to the Monteverde quarter. At this point, his cousin Graziella moved in. They also accommodated Pasolini's ailing, cirrhotic father Carlo Alberto, who died in 1958. Pasolini published ''La meglio gioventù'', his first important collection of Friulan poems. His first novel, '']'' (English: ''Hustlers''), which dealt with the Roman ], was published in 1955. The work had great success but was poorly received by the ] (PCI) establishment and, most importantly, by the Italian government. It initiated a lawsuit for "obscenity" against Pasolini and his editor, Garzanti.<ref>Martelini, L. 2006, p. 62</ref> Although exonerated, Pasolini became a target of insinuations, especially in the ]. | |||
In 1955, together with ], ] and others, Pasolini edited and published a poetry magazine called ''Officina''. The magazine closed in 1959 after fourteen issues. That year he also published his second novel, ''Una vita violenta'', which unlike his first was embraced by the Communist cultural sphere: he subsequently wrote a column titled ''Dialoghi con Passolini'' (meaning ''Passolini in Dialogue''), for the PCI magazine '']'' from May 1960 to September 1965,<ref>{{cite book|author=Robert Samuel Clive Gordon|title=Pasolini: Forms of Subjectivity|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mD2SNnKlK5sC&pg=PA47|year=1996|publisher=Clarendon Press|isbn=978-0-19-815905-6|page=47}}</ref> which were published in book form in 1977 as ''Le belle bandiere'' (''The Beautiful Flags'').<ref name="jacobin"/> In the late 1960s Pasolini edited an advice column in the weekly news magazine '']''.<ref>{{cite book|author=Emma Baron|chapter=Dear Intellectual: The Cultural Advice Columns |title=Popular High Culture in Italian Media, 1950–1970|year=2018|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan|location=Cham, Switzerland|isbn=978-3-319-90963-9|page=55|doi=10.1007/978-3-319-90963-9_3 |chapter-url=https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90963-9_3}}</ref> | |||
During this period Pasolini frequently traveled abroad: in 1961, with ] and ] to ] (where he went again seven years later); in 1962 to ] and ]; in 1963, to ], ], ], ] and ] (where he shot the documentary, ''Sopralluoghi in Palestina''). In 1970 he travelled again to ] to shoot the documentary, ''Appunti per un'Orestiade africana''. | |||
In 1966, Pasolini wrote a screenplay for a never-produced film about the apostle ] which he subsequently revised.<ref>{{Cite web |date=15 June 2015 |title=Pasolini and St Paul |url=https://blogs.bl.uk/european/2015/06/pasolini-and-st-paul.html |access-date=2023-01-16 |website=British Library |language=en}}</ref> Pasolini's screenplay was intended to depict Paul as a modern contemporary without modifying any of Paul's statements.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Badiou |first=Alain |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/51093150 |title=Saint Paul : the foundation of universalism |date=2003 |publisher=] |isbn=0-8047-4470-X |location=Stanford, Calif. |pages=36–37 |oclc=51093150 |author-link=Alain Badiou}}</ref> In Pasolini's story, Paul is a fascist ] collaborator who becomes illuminated while traveling to Franco's Spain and joins the antifascist ], an event which serves as the modern analogue for the ].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Badiou |first=Alain |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/51093150 |title=Saint Paul : the foundation of universalism |date=2003 |publisher=] |isbn=0-8047-4470-X |location=Stanford, Calif. |pages=37–38 |oclc=51093150 |author-link=Alain Badiou}}</ref> The screenplay follows Paul as he preaches resistance in Italy, Spain, Germany, and New York (where he is betrayed, arrested, and executed).<ref>{{Cite book |last=Badiou |first=Alain |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/51093150 |title=Saint Paul : the foundation of universalism |date=2003 |publisher=] |isbn=0-8047-4470-X |location=Stanford, Calif. |pages=38 |oclc=51093150 |author-link=Alain Badiou}}</ref> As philosopher ] writes, "The most surprising thing in all this is the way in which Paul's texts are transplanted unaltered, and with an almost unfathomable naturalness, into the situations in which Pasolini deploys them: war, fascism, American capitalism, the petty debates of Italian intelligentsia"<ref>{{Cite book |last=Badiou |first=Alain |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/51093150 |title=Saint Paul : the foundation of universalism |date=2003 |publisher=] |isbn=0-8047-4470-X |location=Stanford, Calif. |pages=39 |oclc=51093150 |author-link=Alain Badiou}}</ref> | |||
In 1966 he was a member of the jury at the ].<ref name="berlinale 1966">{{cite web |url=http://www.berlinale.de/en/archiv/jahresarchive/1966/04_jury_1966/04_Jury_1966.html |title=Berlinale 1966: Juries |accessdate=2010-02-22 |work=berlinale.de}}</ref> | |||
In 1970, Pasolini bought an old castle near ], several miles north of Rome, where he began to write his last novel, ''Il Petrolio'', in which he denounced obscure dealing in the highest levels of government and the corporate world (], ], ], etc.).<ref>Martelini, L. 2006, p. 192</ref> The novel-documentary was left incomplete at his death. In 1972, Pasolini started to collaborate with the far-left association ], producing a documentary, ''12 dicembre'', concerning the ]. The following year he began a collaboration for Italy's most renowned newspaper, '']''. At the beginning of 1975 Garzanti published a collection of his critical essays, '']'' ('Corsair Writings'). | |||
In 1967, in Venice, he met and interviewed the American poet ].<ref name="youtube.com">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrwIbjwbT0o</ref> They discussed the Italian movement ], arts in general and Pasolini read some verses from the Italian version of Pound's ].<ref name="youtube.com"/> | |||
=== Narrative === | |||
The late 1960s and early 1970s were the era of the so-called "student movement". Pasolini, though acknowledging the students' ideological motivations, thought them "anthropologically middle-class" and therefore destined to fail in their attempts at revolutionary change. Regarding the ], which took place in Rome in March 1968, he said that he sympathized with the police, as they were "children of the poor", while the young militants were exponents of what he called "left-wing fascism". His film of that year, '']'', was shown at the annual ] in a hot political climate. Pasolini had proclaimed that the Festival would be managed by the directors (see also ]). | |||
* '']'' (''The Ragazzi'', 1955) | |||
* ''Una vita violenta'' (''A Violent Life'', 1959) | |||
* ''Il sogno di una cosa'' (1962) | |||
* ''Amado Mio—Atti Impuri'' (1982, originally written in 1948) | |||
* ''Alì dagli occhi azzurri'' (1965) | |||
* ''Teorema'' (1968) | |||
* ''Reality'' ('']'', 1979) | |||
* ''Petrolio'' (1992, incomplete) | |||
=== Poetry === | |||
In 1970 Pasolini bought an old castle near ], several miles north of Rome, where he began to write his last novel, ''Petrolio'', which was never finished. In 1972 he started to collaborate with the extreme-left association ], producing a documentary, ''12 dicembre'', concerning the ]. The following year he began a collaboration for Italy's most renowned newspaper, '']''. | |||
* ''La meglio gioventù'' (1954) | |||
* ''Le ceneri di Gramsci'' (1957) | |||
* ''L'usignolo della chiesa cattolica'' (1958) | |||
* ''La religione del mio tempo'' (1961) | |||
* ''Poesia in forma di rosa'' (1964) | |||
* ''Trasumanar e organizzar'' (1971) | |||
* ''La nuova gioventù'' (1975) | |||
* ''Roman Poems''. Pocket Poets No. 41 (1986) | |||
* ''The Selected Poetry of Pier Paolo Pasolini: A Bilingual Edition''. (2014) | |||
=== Essays === | |||
At the beginning of 1975 Garzanti published a collection of critical essays, '']'' ("Corsair Writings"). | |||
* ''Passione e ideologia'' (1960) | |||
* ''Canzoniere italiano, poesia popolare italiana'' (1960) | |||
* ''Empirismo eretico'' (1972) | |||
* ''Lettere luterane'' (1976) | |||
* ''Le belle bandiere'' (1977) | |||
* ''Descrizioni di descrizioni'' (1979) | |||
* ''Il caos'' (1979) | |||
* ''La pornografia è noiosa'' (1979) | |||
* ''Scritti corsari'' (1975) | |||
* ''Lettere (1940–1954)'' (''Letters, 1940–54'', 1986) | |||
=== |
=== Theatre === | ||
* ''Orgia'' (1968) | |||
Pasolini was murdered by being run over several times with his own car, dying on 2 November 1975 on the beach at ], near ]. Pasolini was buried in Casarsa, in his beloved ]. | |||
* ''Porcile'' (1968) | |||
* ''Calderón'' (1973) | |||
* ''Affabulazione'' (1977) | |||
* ''Pilade'' (1977) | |||
* ''Bestia da stile'' (1977) | |||
=== Films === | |||
Giuseppe Pelosi, a seventeen-year-old ], was arrested and confessed to murdering Pasolini. Twenty-nine years later, on 7 May 2005, he retracted his confession, which he said was made under the threat of violence to his family. He claimed that three people "with a southern accent" had committed the murder, insulting Pasolini as a "dirty communist".<ref>{{cite web|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/film/4529877.stm|title=Pasolini death inquiry reopened |last=Cataldi |first=Benedetto |date=2005-05-05|publisher=bbc.co.uk}}</ref> | |||
In 1957, together with ], Pasolini collaborated on ]'s film '']'', writing dialogue for the ] sections. Fellini also asked him to work on dialogue for some episodes of '']''.<ref>{{cite web |last=Monopoli |first=Leonardo |title=Pasolini e il cinema |url=http://www.homolaicus.com/letteratura/pasolini/7.htm |website=homolaicus.com |access-date=9 September 2018 |language=it}}</ref> Pasolini made his debut as an actor in '']'' in 1960, and co-wrote '']''. Along with ''Ragazzi di vita'', he had his celebrated poem ''Le ceneri di Gramsci'' published, where Pasolini voiced tormented tensions between reason and heart, as well as the existing ideological dialectics within communism, a debate over artistic freedom, ] and commitment.<ref>Martelini, L. 2006, pp. 79–81</ref> | |||
Pasolini's first film as director and screenwriter was '']'' in 1961, again set among Rome's marginal communities, a story of pimps, prostitutes, and thieves that contrasted with Italy's postwar economic recovery. Although Pasolini tried to distance himself from ], it is considered to be a type of second neorealism. Nick Barbaro, a critic writing in the '']'', stated it "may be the grimmest movie" he has ever seen.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.austinchronicle.com/events/film/2001-02-07/140956/|title=Movie Review: Accattone|website=www.austinchronicle.com}}</ref> The film aroused controversy and scandal, with conservatives demanded stricter censorship by the government. In 1963, the episode "]", included in the ] '']'', was censored and Pasolini was tried for "offence to the Italian state and religion".<ref>{{cite news |last=Barbaro |first=Nick |title=Che Bella: Italian Neorealism and the Movies – and the AFS Series – It Inspired |newspaper=] |date=19 January 2001 |url=http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid%3A80268 |access-date=13 December 2006 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061207055450/http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid:80268 |archive-date=7 December 2006 |url-status= live}}</ref> | |||
Other evidence uncovered in 2005 pointed to Pasolini's having been murdered by an extortionist. Testimony by Pasolini's friend Sergio Citti indicated that some of the rolls of film from '']'' had been stolen, and that Pasolini had been going to meet with the thieves after a visit to ], 2 November 1975.<ref>{{cite web|title=Asesinato de Pasolini, nueva investigación|url=http://www.razon.com.mx/spip.php?article29280|work=La Razón|publisher=La Razón|accessdate=4 July 2012|language=Italian}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=Pasolini de nuevo|url=http://www.milenio.com/cdb/doc/impreso/8742252|work=Sentido contrario|publisher=Grupo Milenio|accessdate=4 July 2012|author=Héctor Rivera|language=Italian|date=28|month=March|year=2010}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922 – 1975)|url=http://www.cinematismo.com/biografias/pier-paolo-pasolini-1922-1975/|work=Cinematismo|publisher=Cinematismo|accessdate=4 July 2012|language=Italian}}</ref><ref>http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:ouU8zYEgmXMJ:rassegnastampa.mef.gov.it/mefinternazionale/PDF/2010/2010-04-02/2010040215372121.pdf+muerte+de+pasolini-+rollos+robados&hl=es&gl=co&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESg_Hz3kNu-APpn4-A1D42JjsI01jWmCc2RU0zb8ji3iX5Me-8LlK1uyuIo3mo0-NebUSyoFpa3dPHTIiOtQfs1b07D-_EhM_NYQjqCIObthlxA86VQDWnhZ7wpjQmFbzWDkBQuy&sig=AHIEtbROrSJpidVdGjEyfEHWL7gELlXFTw</ref> Despite the Roman police's reopening of the murder case following Pelosi's statement of May 2005, the judges charged with investigating it determined the new elements insufficient for them to continue the inquiry. | |||
During this period, Pasolini frequently travelled abroad: in 1961, with ] and ] to ] (where he went again seven years later); in 1962, to ] and ]; in 1963, to ], ], ], ] and ] (where he shot the documentary ]). In 1970 he travelled again to Africa to shoot another documentary, ''Appunti per un'Orestiade africana''. Pasolini was a member of the jury at the ] in 1966.<ref name="berlinale 1966">{{cite web |url=http://www.berlinale.de/en/archiv/jahresarchive/1966/04_jury_1966/04_Jury_1966.html |title=Berlinale 1966: Juries |access-date=22 February 2010 |work=berlinale.de}}</ref> In 1967, in ], he met and interviewed American poet ].<ref name="youtube.com">{{YouTube|jrwIbjwbT0o}}. Retrieved 22 May 2014.</ref> They discussed the Italian movement '']'' and Pasolini read some verses from the Italian translation of Pound's '']''.<ref name="youtube.com"/> | |||
== Political views == | |||
Pasolini generated heated public discussion with controversial analyses of public affairs. For instance, during the disorders of 1969, when the ] university students were carrying on a guerrilla-like uprising against the police in the streets of Rome and all the leftist forces declared their complete support for the students, describing the disorders as a civil fight of proletariat against the System, Pasolini, alone among the communists, declared that he was with the police; or, more precisely, with the policemen. He considered them true proletariat, sent to fight for a poor salary and for reasons which they could not understand, against pampered boys of their same age, because they had not had the fortune of being able to study, referring to ''poliziotti figli di proletari meridionali picchiati da figli di papà in vena di bravate'' (lit. ''policemen, sons of proletarian southerners, beaten up by arrogant daddys' boys''). This statement, however, did not stop him from contributing to the autonomist '']'' movement. | |||
The late 1960s and early 1970s were the era of the ]. Pasolini, although acknowledging the students' ideological motivations, and referring to himself as a "Catholic ]",<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.pierpaolopasolini.com/bio.htm|title=Pier Paolo Pasolini – Biography|website=pierpaolopasolini.com}}</ref> thought them "anthropologically middle-class" and therefore destined to fail in their attempts at revolutionary change. Regarding the ], which took place in Rome in March 1968, he said that he sympathized with the police, as they were "children of the poor", while the young militants were exponents of what he called "left-wing fascism".{{citation needed|date=February 2016}} His film that year, '']'', was shown at the Venice Film Festival in a hot political climate. Pasolini had proclaimed that the festival would be managed by the directors.{{citation needed|date=February 2016}} | |||
Pasolini was also an ardent critic of ''consumismo'', i.e. ], which he felt had rapidly destroyed Italian society in the late 1960s/early 1970s. He was particularly concerned about the class of the ], which he portrayed in '']'', and to which he felt both humanly and artistically drawn. Pasolini observed that the kind of purity which he perceived in the pre-industrial popular culture was rapidly vanishing, a process that he named ''la scomparsa delle lucciole'' (lit. "''the disappearance of glow-worms''"). The ''joie de vivre'' of the boys was being rapidly replaced with more ] ambitions such as a house and a family. He described the ] scenes in ''Salò'' as a comment on the processed food industry. He often described consumeristic culture as "unreal", as it had been imposed by economic power and had replaced Italy's traditional peasant culture, something that not even ] had been able to do. In one interview, he said: "I hate with particular vehemency the current power, the power of 1975, which is a power that manipulates bodies in a horrible way; a manipulation that has nothing to envy to that performed by Himmler or Hitler." | |||
He wrote and directed the black-and-white '']'' (1964). It is based on scripture, but adapted by Pasolini, and he is credited as a writer. Jesus, a barefoot peasant, is played by ]. In his 1966 film '']'' (literally ''Bad Birds and Little Birds'' but translated in English as ''The Hawks and the Sparrows''), a picaresque—and at the same time mystic—fable, Pasolini hired great Italian comedian ] to work with ], the director's lover at the time and one of his preferred "naif" actors. It was a unique opportunity for Totò to demonstrate that he was a great dramatic actor as well.{{citation needed|date=February 2016}} In ''Teorema'' (''Theorem'', 1968), starring ] as a mysterious stranger, Pasolini depicted the sexual coming-apart of a ] family. (Variations of this theme were later done by ] in '']'', ] in '']'' and ] in ''].''){{citation needed|date=February 2016}} | |||
He was angered by economic ] and cultural domination of the ] (around ]) over other regions, especially the South.{{Citation needed|reason=<!--These lines are a complete distortion of Pasolini's thoughts against the capitalist-consumerist dominion and not against the cultural hegemony of a part of Italy over the rest of it-->|date=July 2011}} He felt this was accomplished through the power of ]. He opposed the gradual disappearance of Italian ]s by writing some of his poetry in ], the regional language of his childhood. His opposition to the liberalization of ] law made him unpopular on the left.<ref>{{cite web|title=Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975)|url=http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/pasolini.htm|work=Books and Writers|publisher=Kuusankosken kaupunginkirjasto|accessdate=4 July 2012|author=Petri Liukkonen, Ari Pesonen|year=2008}}</ref> | |||
Later films centred on sex-laden folklore, such as ]'s '']'' (1971), ]'s '']'' (1972), and '']'' (literally ''The Flower of 1001 Nights'', released in English as ''Arabian Nights'', 1974). These films are usually grouped as the ''Trilogy of Life''. While basing them on classics, Pasolini wrote the screenplays and took sole writing credit. This trilogy, prompted largely by Pasolini's attempt to show the secular sacredness of the body against man-made social controls and especially against the venal hypocrisy of the religious state (indeed, the religious characters in ''The Canterbury Tales'' are shown as pious but amorally grasping fools) were an effort at representing a state of natural sexual innocence essential to the true nature of free humanity. Alternately playfully bawdy and poetically sensuous, wildly populous, subtly symbolic and visually exquisite, the films were popular in Italy and remain perhaps his most enduringly popular works. Yet despite the fact that the trilogy as a whole is considered by many as a masterpiece, Pasolini later reviled his own creation on account of the many soft-core imitations of these three films in Italy that happened afterwards on account of the very same popularity he wound up deeply uncomfortable with. He believed that a bastardisation of his vision had taken place that amounted to a commoditisation of the body he had tried to deny in his trilogy in the first place. The disconsolation this provided is seen as one of the primary reasons for his final film, '']'', in which humans are not only seen as commodities under authoritarian control but are viewed merely as cyphers for its whims, without the free vitality of the figures in the Trilogy of Life. | |||
After the '68 left communism, claiming instead the ] (''Partito Radicale''), ], ] and ], led by his friend ]. In 1975, leaving a letter to Congress with radical party on written :« Dear Pannella, dear friends, dear radical Spadaccia you don't need to do anything else (I believe) that continue to be yourself: which means continuously be unrecognizable. Forget immediately i grandi successi: and continue straight ahead, obstinate, eternally opposed, to demand, to want, to identify yourself with the other; to shock; to blaspheme». | |||
His final work, '']'' (''Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom'', 1975), exceeded what most viewers could accept at the time in its explicit scenes of sexual perversity and intensely sadistic violence. Based on the novel '']'' by ], it is considered Pasolini's most controversial film. In May 2006, '']''{{'}}s Film Guide named it the "Most Controversial Film" of all time. Salò was intended as the first film of his ''Trilogy of Death'', followed by an aborted biopic film about ]. | |||
== Sexuality == | |||
The '']'' encyclopedia states the following regarding Pasolini's ]: | |||
<blockquote> | |||
While openly gay from the very start of his career (thanks to a gay sex scandal that sent him packing from his provincial hometown to live and work in Rome), Pasolini rarely dealt with homosexuality in his movies. | |||
The subject is featured prominently in ''Teorema'' (1968), where Terence Stamp's mysterious God-like visitor seduces the son and father of an upper-middle-class family; passingly in ''Arabian Nights'' (1974), in an idyll between a king and a commoner that ends in death; and, most darkly of all, in ''Salò, or The 120 Days of Sodom'' (1975), his infamous rendition of the Marquis de Sade's compendium of sexual horrors.<ref></ref> | |||
</blockquote> | |||
In 1963 he met "the great love of his life," fifteen-year-old ] whom he later cast in his 1966 film '']'' (literally ''Bad Birds and Little Birds'' but translated in English as ''The Hawks and the Sparrows''), Pasolini became his mentor and friend. "Even though their sexual relations lasted only a few years, Ninetto continued to live with Pasolini and was his constant companion, as well as appearing in six more of his films."<ref>{{cite news | first = Doug | last = Ireland | title = Restoring Pasolini | date = 2005-08-04 | publisher = LA Weekly, LP | url = http://www.laweekly.com/2005-08-04/news/restoring-pasolini/ | work = LA Weekly | accessdate = 2010-08-29}}</ref> | |||
== Works == | |||
Pasolini's first novel '']'' (1955) dealt with the Roman ]. The resulting ] charges against him were the first of many instances where his ] provoked legal problems. '']'' (1961), also about the ] underworld, also provoked controversy with conservatives, who demanded stricter ]. | |||
He then directed the black-and-white '']'' (1964). This film is a cinematic adaptation of the life of ] (]). While filming it, Pasolini vowed to direct it from the "believer's point of view", but later said that upon viewing the completed work, he realized he had instead expressed his own beliefs. | |||
In his 1966 film, '']'' (literally ''Bad Birds and Little Birds'' but translated in English as ''The Hawks and the Sparrows''), a picaresque—and at the same time mystic—fable, he hired the great Italian ] ] to work with one of his preferred "naif" actors, ]. It was a unique opportunity for Totò to demonstrate that he was a great dramatic actor as well. | |||
In '']'' (''Theorem'', 1968), starring ] as a mysterious stranger, he depicted the sexual coming-apart of a ] family (later repeated by ] in '']'' and ] in ]). | |||
Later movies centered on sex-laden ], such as ]'s '']'' (1971) and ]'s '']'' (1972) and '']'' (literally ''The Flower of 1001 Nights'', released in English as ''Arabian Nights'', 1974). These films are usually grouped as the ''Trilogy of Life''. | |||
His final work, '']'' (''Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom'', 1975), exceeded what most viewers could then stomach in its explicit scenes of intensely sadistic violence. Based on the novel '']'' by ], it is considered his most controversial film. In May 2006, '']'''s Film Guide named it the Most Controversial Film of all time. | |||
== Legacy == | |||
As a director, Pasolini created a ] ], showing a sad reality. Many people did not want to see such portrayals in artistic work for public distribution. '']'' (1962), featuring ] and telling the story of a prostitute and her son, was an affront to the morality of those times. His works, with their unequaled poetry applied to cruel realities, showing that such realities are less distant from us than we imagine, made a major contribution to change in the Italian psyche.{{Citation needed|date=February 2009}}<ref name=JAM8>{{cite book | |||
| title = Il Caos (collected articles) | |||
| author = Pasolini Pierr Paolo | |||
| year = 1995 | |||
| publisher = Editori Riuniti | |||
| location = Roma | |||
| language = Italian | |||
}}</ref> | |||
* Note: All titles listed below were written and directed by Pasolini unless stated otherwise. | |||
The director also promoted in his works the concept of "natural sacredness," the idea that the world is holy in and of itself. He suggested there was no need for spiritual essence or supernatural blessing to attain this state. | |||
General disapproval of Pasolini's work was perhaps caused primarily by his frequent focus on sexual mores, and the contrast between what he presented and publicly sanctioned behavior. While Pasolini's poetry often dealt with his same-sex love interests, this was not the only, or even main, theme. His interest and approach to Italian dialects should also be noted. Much of the poetry was about his highly revered mother. As a sensitive and intelligent man, he depicted certain corners of the contemporary reality as few other poets could do. His poetry was not as well known as his films outside Italy.{{Citation needed|date=February 2009}}<ref>{{cite book | |||
| url = http://books.google.com/books?id=pqzRAIwoq8EC&dq=pier+paolo+pasolini+collected+poems&hl=en&ei=6Bt3Ts7dEabl4QS1mMyWDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAA | |||
| title = Collected Poems | |||
| author = Pasolini Pier Paolo | |||
| year = 1996 | |||
| publisher = Noonday Press | |||
| ISBN = 9780374524692 | |||
}}</ref> | |||
He had also developed a philosophy of language mainly related to his studies on cinema;<ref name=JAM7>{{cite book | |||
| url = http://books.google.com/books?id=v0-pPQAACAAJ&dq=pier+paolo+pasolini&hl=en&ei=oRd3TqXtLOKE4gT83_WcDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CEoQ6AEwBzgU | |||
| title = Heretical empiricism | |||
| last = Pasolini | |||
| first = Pier Paolo | |||
| date = 1988-2005 | |||
| publisher = New Academia Publishing | |||
| ISBN = 9780976704225 | |||
}}</ref> this theorical and critical activity was another debated topic by the acclimated cultural background as the collected articles still available today show.<ref name=JAM8 /><ref>{{cite book | |||
| title = Dibattiti sui film | |||
| author = A. Covi | |||
| year = 1971 | |||
| publisher = Gregoriana | |||
| location = Padova | |||
| language = Italian | |||
}}</ref><ref>{{cite book | |||
| title = Scrittori e Popolo – il populismo nella letteratura italiana contemporanea | |||
| author = A. Asor Rosa | |||
| year = 1988 | |||
| publisher = Gregoriana | |||
| location = Torino | |||
| language = Italian | |||
}}</ref> | |||
These studies can be considered as the foundation of his artistic point of view, and they point out two main aspects: the language—such as English, Italian, dialect or other—is a rigid system in which human thought is trapped; the cinema is the written language of reality which, like any other written language, enables man to see things from the point of view of truth.<ref name=JAM7 /> | |||
His films won awards at the ], ], ], Italian National Syndicate for Film Journalists, ], Kinema Junpo Awards, International Catholic Film Office and ]. | |||
] directed the documentary ''Das Mitleid ist gestorben'' about Pasolini. | |||
In 2005 ] recorded '']'' in dedication to Pasolini. | |||
== Filmography == | |||
===Feature films=== | |||
All titles listed below were written and directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini unless stated otherwise. Although obviously ''Oedipus Rex'' and ''Medea'' are loosely based on plays by ] and ] respectively, significant liberties were taken with original texts and titles do not credit anyone except Pasolini. The latter is also true in the case of ]. | |||
{| class="wikitable" | {| class="wikitable" | ||
! rowspan="2" |Year | |||
! colspan="2" |Title | |||
! rowspan="2" |Adapted from | |||
! rowspan="2" |Notes | |||
|- | |- | ||
! style="width:20%;" |Original | |||
!width="5%"|Year | |||
! style="width:26%;" |In English | |||
!width="20%"|Original title | |||
!width="26%"|English title | |||
! Notes | |||
|- | |- | ||
| 1961 | | 1961 | ||
| '']'' | | '']'' | ||
| ''Accattone |
| ''Accattone'' | ||
| |
| Pasolini's novel ''Una vita violenta.'' | ||
| Screenplay written in collaboration with ]. | |||
|-style=background:#efefef;<br>] | |||
|- style=background:#efefef;<br />] Best Director Award | |||
| 1962 | | 1962 | ||
| '']'' | | '']'' | ||
| ''Mamma Roma'' | | ''Mamma Roma'' | ||
| | |||
| Screenplay by Pier Paolo Pasolini with additional dialogue by Sergio Citti. | |||
|Screenplay by Pasolini with additional dialogue by Citti. | |||
|- | |- | ||
| 1964 | | 1964 | ||
| '']'' | | '']'' | ||
| ''The Gospel According to Matthew'' | | ''The Gospel According to St. Matthew'' | ||
|The ]. | |||
|]-] | |||
| Won the ] at the ], United Nations Award at the ]. | |||
|-style=background:#efefef; | |||
|- style=background:#efefef; | |||
| 1966 | | 1966 | ||
| '']'' | | '']'' | ||
| ''The Hawks and the Sparrows'' | | ''The Hawks and the Sparrows'' | ||
| | |||
| | | | ||
|- | |- | ||
| 1967 | | 1967 | ||
| '']'' | | '']'' | ||
| ''Oedipus Rex'' | | ''Oedipus Rex'' | ||
| '']'' by ]. | |||
| | |||
|Acted in the film as High Priest | |||
|-style=background:#efefef; | |||
|- style=background:#efefef; | |||
| 1968 | | 1968 | ||
| '']'' | | '']'' | ||
| ''Theorem'' |
| ''Theorem''{{efn|The translated English title is used infrequently.}} | ||
| | |||
| Pasolini's novel ''Teorema'' was also published in 1968. | | Pasolini's novel ''Teorema'' was also published in 1968. | ||
|- | |- | ||
Line 203: | Line 175: | ||
| ''Pigsty'' | | ''Pigsty'' | ||
| | | | ||
| | |||
|-style=background:#efefef; | |||
|- style=background:#efefef; | |||
| 1969 | | 1969 | ||
| '']'' | | '']'' | ||
| ''Medea'' | | ''Medea'' | ||
| '']'' by ]. | |||
| | | | ||
|- | |- | ||
| 1971 | | 1971 | ||
| '']'' | | '']'' | ||
| ''The Decameron'' | | ''The Decameron'' | ||
| '']'' by ]. | |||
| Based on '']'' by ]. Won the ] at the ].<ref name = "berlinale 1971">{{cite web |url=http://www.berlinale.de/en/archiv/jahresarchive/1971/03_preistr_ger_1971/03_Preistraeger_1971.html |title=Berlinale 1972: Prize Winners |accessdate=2011-06-26 |work=berlinale.de}}</ref> | |||
| Won the ] at the ].<ref name = "berlinale 1971">{{cite web |url=http://www.berlinale.de/en/archiv/jahresarchive/1971/03_preistr_ger_1971/03_Preistraeger_1971.html |title=Berlinale 1972: Prize Winners |access-date=26 June 2011 |work=berlinale.de |archive-date=4 May 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140504155337/http://www.berlinale.de/en/archiv/jahresarchive/1971/03_preistr_ger_1971/03_Preistraeger_1971.html |url-status=dead }}</ref> Acted in the film as Allievo di Giotto. | |||
|-style=background:#efefef; | |||
|- style=background:#efefef; | |||
| 1972 | | 1972 | ||
| '']'' | | '']'' | ||
| ''The Canterbury Tales'' | | ''The Canterbury Tales'' | ||
| '']'' by ]. | |||
| Based on '']'' by ]. Won the ] at the ].<ref name="berlinale 1972">{{cite web |url=http://www.berlinale.de/en/archiv/jahresarchive/1972/03_preistr_ger_1972/03_Preistraeger_1972.html |title=Berlinale 1972: Prize Winners |accessdate=2010-03-16 |work=berlinale.de}}</ref> | |||
| Won the ] at the ].<ref name="berlinale 1972">{{cite web |url=http://www.berlinale.de/en/archiv/jahresarchive/1972/03_preistr_ger_1972/03_Preistraeger_1972.html |title=Berlinale 1972: Prize Winners |access-date=16 March 2010 |work=berlinale.de |archive-date=27 April 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140427082617/http://www.berlinale.de/en/archiv/jahresarchive/1972/03_preistr_ger_1972/03_Preistraeger_1972.html |url-status=dead }}</ref> Acted in the film as Geoffrey Chaucer. | |||
|- | |- | ||
| 1974 | | 1974 | ||
| '']'' | | '']'' | ||
| ''A Thousand and One Nights'' (''Arabian Nights'') | | ''A Thousand and One Nights'' (''Arabian Nights'') | ||
|'']'' | |||
| Screenplay written in collaboration with ]. Won the ].<ref name="festival-cannes.com">{{cite web |url=http://www.festival-cannes.com/en/archives/ficheFilm/id/2245/year/1974.html |title=Festival de Cannes: Arabian Nights |accessdate=2011-06-26|work=festival-cannes.com}}</ref> | |||
| Screenplay written in collaboration with Dacia Maraini. | |||
|-style=background:#efefef; | |||
Won the ] at the ].<ref name="festival-cannes.com">{{cite web |url=http://www.festival-cannes.com/en/archives/ficheFilm/id/2245/year/1974.html |title=Festival de Cannes: Arabian Nights |access-date=26 June 2011 |work=festival-cannes.com}}</ref> | |||
|- style=background:#efefef; | |||
| 1975 | | 1975 | ||
| '']'' | | '']'' | ||
| ''Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom'' | | ''Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom'' | ||
| |
| '']'' by the ]. | ||
| Screenplay written in collaboration with Citti with extended quotes from ]' ''Sade, Fourier, Loyola'' and ]'s ''Sade mon prochain''. | |||
|} | |} | ||
=== Episodes in omnibus films === | |||
===Documentaries=== | |||
* '']'' (1964) | |||
* '']'' (''Love Meetings'', 1964) | |||
* '']'' (1969) | |||
* '']'' (1970) | |||
* '']'' (1971) | |||
* ''] (1972) | |||
* ''Pasolini e la forma della città'' (1975) | |||
* '']'' (''Notes Towards an African Orestes'', 1975) | |||
===Episodes in omnibus films=== | |||
* '']'' in '']'' (1963) | * '']'' in '']'' (1963) | ||
* First segment of '']'' (1963) | * First segment of '']'' (1963) | ||
* |
* "La Terra vista dalla Luna" in '']'' (1967) | ||
* |
* "Che cosa sono le nuvole?" in '']'' (1968) | ||
* |
* "La sequenza del fiore di carta" in '']'' (1969) | ||
=== Documentaries === | |||
==Bibliography== | |||
* '']'' (1964)<ref>{{Citation |title=Love Meetings (1964) - Release info - IMDb |url=https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057960/releaseinfo/ |access-date=2024-01-10 |language=en-US}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Pasolini |title=Love Meetings (Criterion Collection) |url=https://www.criterion.com/films/31432-love-meetings}}</ref> | |||
<!-- Selected works available in English. --- Please don't limit things to English version. This is an international encyclopedia.--> | |||
* '']'' (1965) | |||
* '']'' (1968) | |||
* ''Appunti per un romanzo dell'immondizia'' (1970) | |||
* '']'' (1970) | |||
* ''Le mura di Sana'a'' (1971) | |||
* ''12 Dicembre 1972'' (1972) | |||
* ''Pasolini e la forma della città'' (1974) | |||
== Personal life == | |||
A small scandal broke out during a local festival in ] in September 1949. Someone informed Cordovado, the local sergeant of the ], of sexual conduct (]) by Pasolini with three youngsters aged sixteen and younger after dancing and drinking.<ref name="Siciliano, Enzo. 2014, 148"/> Cordovado summoned the boys' parents, who refused to file charges despite Cordovado's urging. Cordovado nevertheless drew up a report, and the informer elaborated publicly on his accusations, sparking a public uproar. A judge in San Vito al Tagliamento charged Pasolini with "corruption of minors and obscene acts in public places".<ref name="Siciliano, Enzo. 2014, 148"/><ref name="Martelini, L. 2006, p. 48">Martelini, L. 2006, p. 48</ref> He and the 16-year-old were both indicted.<ref name="Siciliano, Enzo. 2014, 149">Siciliano, Enzo. 2014, 149</ref> | |||
* ''Poems'' | |||
* '']'' (''The Ragazzi'', 1955) | |||
* '']'' (''A Violent Life'', 1959) | |||
* '']'' (1962) | |||
* ''Amado Mio—Atti Impuri'' (1982, originally composed in 1948) | |||
* ''Alì dagli occhi azzurri'' (1965) | |||
* ''Teorema'' (1968) | |||
* ''Reality'' ('']'', 1979) | |||
* '']'' (1992, incomplete) | |||
The next month, when questioned, Pasolini would not deny the facts, but talked of a "literary and erotic drive" and cited ], the 1947 ] ]. Cordovado informed his superiors and the regional press stepped in.<ref name="Siciliano, Enzo. 2014, 149"/> According to Pasolini, the Christian Democrats instigated the entire affair to smear his name ("the Christian Democrats pulled the strings"). He was fired from his job in Valvasone<ref name="Martelini, L. 2006, p. 48"/> and was expelled from the PCI by the party's Udine section, which he considered a betrayal. He addressed a critical letter to the head of the section, his friend Ferdinando Mautino, and claimed he was being subject to a "tacticism" of the PCI. In the party, the expulsion was opposed by Teresa Degan, Pasolini's colleague in education. He also wrote her a letter admitting his regret for being "such a naif, even indecently so".<ref name="Siciliano, Enzo. 2014, 148"/> Pasolini's parents reacted angrily and the situation in the family also became untenable.<ref>Siciliano, Enzo. 2014, 151</ref> In late 1949, he decided to move to Rome along with his mother seeking to start a new life, settling down in the outskirts of Rome. | |||
=== Poetry === | |||
* ''La meglio gioventù'' (1954) | |||
* ''Le ceneri di Gramsci'' (1957) | |||
* ''L'usignolo della chiesa cattolica'' (1958) | |||
* ''La religione del mio tempo'' (1961) | |||
* ''Poesia in forma di rosa'' (1964) | |||
* ''Trasumanar e organizzar'' (1971) | |||
* ''La nuova gioventù'' (1975) | |||
* '']''. Pocket Poets #41 (1986) | |||
In 1963, at the age of 41, Pasolini met "the great love of his life", 15-year-old ], whom he later cast in his 1966 film '']'' (literally ''Bad Birds and Little Birds'' but translated in English as ''The Hawks and the Sparrows''). Pasolini became the youth's mentor and friend.<ref>{{cite news |first=Doug |last=Ireland |title=Restoring Pasolini |date=4 August 2005 |work=LA Weekly |publisher=LA Weekly, LP |url=http://www.laweekly.com/2005-08-04/news/restoring-pasolini/ |access-date=29 August 2010 |archive-date=27 December 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131227224102/http://www.laweekly.com/2005-08-04/news/restoring-pasolini/ |url-status=dead }}</ref> | |||
=== Essays === | |||
* ''Passione e ideologia'' (1960) | |||
* ''Canzoniere italiano, poesia popolare italiana'' (1960) | |||
* ''Empirismo eretico'' (1972) | |||
* ''Lettere luterane'' (1976) | |||
* ''Le belle bandiere'' (1977) | |||
* ''Descrizioni di descrizioni'' (1979) | |||
* ''Il caos'' (1979) | |||
* ''La pornografia è noiosa'' (1979) | |||
* ''Scritti corsari'' (1975) | |||
* ''Lettere (1940–1954)'' (''Letters, 1940-54'', 1986) | |||
However, there were some important women in Pasolini's life, with whom Pasolini shared a feeling of profound and unique friendship, in particular ] and ]. ], an Italian writer, said of Callas' behaviour towards Pasolini: "She used to follow him everywhere, even to Africa. She hoped to 'convert' him to heterosexuality and to marriage."<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.centrostudipierpaolopasolinicasarsa.it/molteniblog/lamore-impossibile-tra-ppp-e-maria-callas-nel-film-lisola-di-medea-di-sergio-naitza/ | title=L'Amore impossibile tra PPP e Maria Callas nel film "L'isola di Medea" di Sergio Naitza | date=7 August 2016 }}</ref> Pasolini was also sensible to the problematics related to the "new" role ascribed to women through the Italian media, stating in a 1972 interview that "women are not slot machines".<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.centrostudipierpaolopasolinicasarsa.it/molteniblog/pasolini-e-le-donne-oggetto-del-piccolo-schermo/ | title=Pasolini e le donne-oggetto del piccolo schermo | date=2 June 2017 }}</ref> | |||
=== Theatre === | |||
* ''Orgia'' (1968) | |||
He was a supporter of his hometown football club ].<ref>{{Cite web |last=Twitty |first=Thalia |date=2022-04-18 |title=Pasolini's greatest passion: football |url=https://www.wireservice.ca/pasolinis-greatest-passion-football/ |access-date=2023-08-11 |website=Wire Service Canada |language=en-CA}}</ref> | |||
* ''Porcile'' (1968) | |||
* ''Calderón'' (1973) | |||
== Political views == | |||
* ''Affabulazione'' (1977) | |||
]'s tomb in Rome]] | |||
* ''Pilade'' (1977) | |||
{{Communism in Italy|expanded=People}} | |||
* ''Bestia da stile'' (1977) | |||
=== Relationship with the Italian Communist Party === | |||
]]] | |||
By October 1945, the political status of the ] region became a matter of contention between different political factions. On 30 October, Pasolini joined the pro-devolution association ''Patrie tal Friul'', founded in ]. Pasolini wanted a Friuli based on its tradition, attached to the ], but intent on civic and ], as opposed to those advocates of regional autonomy who wanted to preserve their privileges based on "immobilism".<ref name="Siciliano, Enzo. 2014, 111-112">Siciliano, Enzo. 2014, 111–112</ref> He also criticized the ] (PCI) for its opposition to ] and preference instead for ]. Pasolini founded the party Movimento Popolare Friulano, but resigned upon realizing that it was being covertly manipulated by Italy's ruling ] to counter local ], who were attempting to annex large swaths of the Friuli region to the ].<ref name="Siciliano, Enzo. 2014, 111-112"/> | |||
On 26 January 1947, Pasolini wrote a declaration that was published on the front page of the newspaper '']'': "In our opinion, we think that currently only Communism is able to provide a new culture." It generated controversy, partly due to the fact he was still not a member of the PCI. Pasolini planned to extend the work of the Academiuta to the literature of other ]s, and met ]d ] poet Carles Cardó. He took part in several demonstrations after joining the PCI. In May 1949, he attended the Peace Congress in Paris. Observing the struggles of workers and peasants, and watching the clashes of protesters with Italian police, he began to conceive his first novel. During this period, while holding a position as a teacher in a secondary school, he stood out in the local Italian Communist Party section as a skilful writer, while defying the official Party platform that ] was ]. Along with the Party leadership, local Christian Democrats and Catholic clergy also took notice. In the summer of 1949, Pasolini was warned by a ] to renounce ] or lose his teaching position. Similarly, after some posters were put up in Udine, Giambattista Caron, a Christian Democrat deputy, warned Pasolini's cousin Nico Naldini that " should abandon communist propaganda" to prevent "pernicious reactions".<ref name="Siciliano, Enzo. 2014, 148">Siciliano, Enzo. 2014, 148</ref> | |||
=== Anti-fascism and 1968 protests === | |||
Pasolini generated heated public discussion with controversial analyses of public affairs. For instance, autonomist university students were carrying on a guerrilla-style uprising against the police in the streets of Rome during the disorders of 1968. For their supporters, the disorders were a civil fight of the proletariat against the system. Pasolini made comments that have been interpreted that he was with the police or that he was a man of order, and that he was an anti-anti-fascist.<ref name="Centro Studi Pier Paolo Pasolini 2018">{{Cite web |date=2018-02-25 |title=Contro le strumentalizzazioni di Pasolini: il falso dell"anti-antifascismo", di Wu Ming 1 |url=http://www.centrostudipierpaolopasolinicasarsa.it/approfondimenti/contro-le-strumentalizzazioni-di-pasolini-il-falso-dellanti-antifascismo-di-wu-ming-1/ |access-date=2023-09-25 |website=Centro Studi Pier Paolo Pasolini Casarsa della Delizia |language=it-IT}}</ref> According to the Centro Studi Pier Paolo Pasolini, the myth of an "anti-anti-fascist" Pasolini served to propose unlikely anti-globalist alliances by neo-fascists.<ref name="Centro Studi Pier Paolo Pasolini 2018"/> ''Anti-antifascismo'' was never used by Pasolini and was only added in later years as the title of the ''Scritti corsari'' collection.<ref name="Centro Studi Pier Paolo Pasolini 2018"/> Pasolini used the concept to attack various institutional subjects, such as ], the Italian president ], ], and the Health Commission of the Chamber of Deputies, which were all guilty of ignoring some requests from ], who had been on hunger strike for over two months.<ref name="Centro Studi Pier Paolo Pasolini 2018"/> He excluded the PCI from those parties of the constitutional arc that, as declared by Pasolini in June 1975, tried to "rebuild an anti-fascist virginity ... but, at the same time, maintaining the impunity of the fascist gangs that they, if they wanted, would liquidate in a day".<ref name="Centro Studi Pier Paolo Pasolini 2018"/> | |||
The main source regarding Pasolini's views of the student movement is his poem "Il PCI ai giovani" ('The PCI to Young People'), written after the Battle of Valle Giulia. Addressing the students, he tells them that, unlike the international news media which has been reporting on them, he will not flatter them. He points out that they are the children of the ] (''Avete facce di figli di papà / Vi odio come odio i vostri papà'' – 'You have the faces of daddy's boys / I hate you like I hate your dads'), before stating ''Quando ieri a Valle Giulia avete fatto a botte coi poliziotti / io simpatizzavo coi poliziotti'' ('When you and the policemen were throwing punches yesterday at Valle Giulia / I was sympathising with the policemen'). He explained that this sympathy was because the policemen were ''figli di poveri'' ('children of the poor'). The poem highlights the aspect of generational struggle within the bourgeoisie represented by the student movement: ''Stampa e Corriere della Sera, News- week e Monde / vi leccano il culo. Siete i loro figli / la loro speranza, il loro futuro... Se mai / si tratta di una lotta intestina'' (''']'' and '']'', '']'' and '']'' / they kiss your arse. You are their children / their hope, their future... If anything / it's in-fighting').<ref name="pci" /> | |||
The 1968 revolt was seen by Pasolini as an internal, benign reform of the establishment in Italy, since the protesters were part of the petite bourgeoisie.<ref>Martelini, L. 2006, pp. 141–142</ref> The poem also implied a class hypocrisy on the part of the establishment towards the protesters, asking whether young workers would be treated similarly if they behaved in the same way: ''Occupate le università / ma dite che la stessa idea venga / a dei giovani operai / E allora: Corriere della Sera e Stampa, Newsweek e Monde / avranno tanta sollecitudine / nel cercar di comprendere i loro problemi? / La polizia si limiterà a prendere un po' di botte / dentro una fabbrica occupata? / Ma, soprattutto, come potrebbe concedersi / un giovane operaio di occupare una fabbrica / senza morire di fame dopo tre giorni?'' ('Occupy the universities / but say that the same idea comes / to young workers / So: ''Corriere della Sera'' and ''Stampa'', ''Newsweek'' and ''Le Monde'' / will have so much care / in trying to understand their problems? / Will the police just get a bit of a fight / inside an occupied factory? / But above all, how could / a young worker be allowed to occupy a factory / without dying of hunger after three days?'<ref name="pci">{{cite magazine |last=Pasolini |first=Pier Paolo |date=16 June 1968 |title=Il Pci ai giovani |trans-title=The PCI to Young People |url=http://temi.repubblica.it/espresso-il68/1968/06/16/il-pci-ai-giovani/?printpage=undefined |language=it |magazine=]|access-date=8 June 2018 }}</ref> | |||
Pasolini suggested that the police were the true proletariat, sent to fight for a poor salary and for reasons which they could not understand, against pampered boys of their same age, because they had not had the fortune of being able to study, referring to ''poliziotti figli di proletari meridionali picchiati da figli di papà in vena di bravate'' ('policemen, sons of proletarian southerners, beaten up by arrogant daddy's boys'). He found that the policemen were but the outer layer of the real power, e.g. the judiciary.<ref>Martelini, L. 2006, p. 141</ref> Pasolini was not alien to courts and trials. During all his life, Pasolini was frequently entangled in up to 33 lawsuits filed against him, variously charged with "public disgrace", "foul language", "obscenity", "pornography", "contempt of religion", and "contempt of the state", for which he was always eventually acquitted.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Pasolini e i processi |url=https://webtv.loescher.it/externalResources/downloadRes?resId=367205&itemId=366913 |access-date=25 September 2023 |website=Loescher Editore |language=it}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Damato |first=Cosimo Damiano |date=2022-05-22 |title=Pier Paolo Pasolini e il libro bianco delle persecuzioni |url=https://rewriters.it/pier-paolo-pasolini-e-il-libro-bianco-delle-persecuzioni/ |access-date=2023-09-25 |website=ReWriters |language=it-IT}}</ref> | |||
The conventional interpretation of Pasolini's position has been challenged.<ref name="Centro Studi Pier Paolo Pasolini 2018"/> In an article published in 2015, ] argued that Pasolini's statements need to be understood in the context of Pasolini's self-confessed hatred of the bourgeoisie which had persecuted him for so long, as "Il PCI ai giovani" states that "We (i.e. Pasolini and the students) are obviously in agreement against the police institution", and that the poem portrays policemen as dehumanised by their work. Although the battles between students and the police were fights between the rich and the poor, Pasolini concedes that the students were "on the side of reason" whilst the police were "in the wrong". Wu Ming suggested that Pasolini intended to express scepticism regarding the idea of students being a revolutionary force, contending that only the working class could make a revolution and that revolutionary students should join the PCI. Furthermore, he cites a column by Pasolini which was published in the magazine ''Tempo'' later that year, which described the student movement, along with the wartime resistance, as "the Italian people's only two democratic-revolutionary experiences". That year, he also wrote in support of the PCI's proposals for disarming the police, arguing that this would create a break in the psychology of policemen. He said: "It would lead to the sudden collapse of that 'false idea of himself' ascribed to him by Power, which has programmed him like a robot." Pasolini's polemics were aimed at goading protesters into re-thinking their revolt, and did not stop him from contributing to the autonomist '']'' movement, who he described as "extremists, yes, maybe fanatic and insolently boorish from a cultural point of view, but they push their luck and that is precisely why I think they deserve to be supported. We must want too much to obtain a little."<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.internazionale.it/reportage/2015/10/29/pasolini-polizia-anniversario-morte |title=La polizia contro Pasolini, Pasolini contro la polizia |author=Wu Ming 1 |author-link=Wu Ming|date=29 October 2015|website=Internazionale.it|language=it |trans-title=The Police vs. Pasolini, Pasolini vs. The Police|access-date=8 June 2018}}</ref><ref name="Wu Ming 2016">{{cite web |url=http://wumingfoundation.tumblr.com/post/136530231760/pasoliniagainstthecops |title=The Police vs. Pasolini, Pasolini vs. The Police|author=Wu Ming 1 |author-link=Wu Ming |last2=Meer |first2=Ayan |date=3 January 2016|website=] |access-date=8 June 2018|via=Tumblr}}</ref> | |||
=== Rising society of consumption === | |||
Pasolini was particularly concerned about the class of the ], which he portrayed in '']'', and to which he felt both humanly and artistically drawn. He observed that the type of purity which he perceived in the pre-industrial popular culture was rapidly vanishing, a process that he named ''la scomparsa delle lucciole'' ('the disappearance of the fireflies'). The ''joie de vivre'' of boys was being rapidly replaced with more bourgeois ambitions such as a house and a family. He was critical of those leftists who held a "traditional and never admitted hatred against lumpenproletariats and poor populations". In 1958, he called on the PCI to become "'the party of the poor people': the party, we may say, of the lumpenproletarians".<ref name="jacobin">{{cite web |url=https://jacobinmag.com/2018/06/pier-paolo-pasolini-pci-communist-party |title=Remembering Pier Paolo Pasolini |last=Peretti |first=Luca |date=1 June 2018 |website=]|access-date=7 June 2018}}</ref> | |||
Pasolini's stance finds its roots in the belief that a ] change was taking place in Italian society and the world. Linked to that very idea, he was also an ardent critic of ''consumismo'', i.e. ], which he felt had rapidly destroyed Italian society from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s. He described the ] scenes in ''Salò'' as a comment on the processed food industry. As he saw it, the society of consumerism ("neocapitalism") and the "new fascism" had thus expanded an alienation / homogenization and centralization that the former clerical fascism had not managed to achieve, so bringing about an anthropological change.<ref>Martelini, L. 2006, pp. 184–185</ref> That change is related to the loss of ] and the expansion of productivity as central to the human condition, which he despised. He found that 'new culture' was degrading and vulgar.<ref>Siciliano, Enzo. 2014, p. 389</ref> In one interview, he said: "I hate with particular vehemency the current power, the power of 1975, which is a power that manipulates bodies in a horrible way; a manipulation that has nothing to envy to that performed by ] or ]." According to Pasolini scholar Simona Bondavalli, Pasolini's definition of neo-capitalism as a "new fascism" enforced uniform conformity without resorting to coercive means. As Pasolini put it, "No Fascist centralism succeeded in doing what the centralism of consumer culture did."<ref>{{cite book |last=Bondavalli |first=Simona |title=Fictions of Youth:Pier Paolo Pasolini, Adolescence, Fascisms |date=2015 |publisher=University of Toronto Press |isbn=9781442627079 |location=Toronto, ON}}</ref> Philosopher Davide Tarizzo summarized Pasolini's position: | |||
{{cquote|"In his view, both old and new fascisms undermine the fundamentals of modern democracy. Yet new fascism does not do this by absolutizing popular sovereignty at the expense of individual rights. New fascism celebrates our freedoms and absolutizes human rights to the detriment of our sense of belonging to a social-political community. Therefore, old and new fascisms strive to accomplish democracy—which is the restless ambition of fascism—via opposite routes. In the former case, the result is the birth of political subjects such as the master race, supported by revelatory political grammar. In the latter case, the result is the birth of an altogether different subject, which is no longer a political actor, properly speaking, but a passive, anonymous entity: the human population."<ref>{{cite book |last=Tarizzo |first=Davide |title=Political grammars: the unconscious foundations of modern democracy |date=2021 |publisher=Stanford University Press |page=163 |isbn=9781503615328 |location=Stanford, CA |series=Square One: First Order Questions in the Humanities}}</ref>}} | |||
=== Strong criticism of Christian Democracy === | |||
] | |||
Pasolini saw some continuity between the Fascist era and the post-war political system which was led by the Christian Democrats, describing the latter as "clerico-fascism" due to its use of the state as a repressive instrument and its manipulation of power: he saw the conditions among the Roman sub proletariat in the ''borgate'' as an example of this, being marginalised and segregated socially and geographically as they were under Fascism, and in conflict with a criminal police force.<ref name="Wu Ming 2016" /> He also blamed the Christian Democrats for assimilating the values of consumer capitalism, contributing to what he saw as the erosion of human values.<ref name="od">{{cite web |url=https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/pasolini_2982jsp/ |title=The life and death of Pier Paolo Pasolini |last=Andrews |first=Geoff |date=1 November 2005 |website=] |access-date=7 November 2022}}</ref> | |||
The ] saw the rise of the leftist parties, and dwelling on his blunt, ever more political approach and prophetic style during this period, he declared in ''Corriere della Sera'' that the time had come to put the most prominent Christian Democrat figures on trial, where they would need to be shown walking in handcuffs and led by the ]; he felt that this was the only way they could be removed from power.<ref name="od" /><ref name="Siciliano, Enzo. 2014, pp. 388-389">Siciliano, Enzo. 2014, pp. 388–389</ref> Pasolini charged the Christian Democratic leadership with being "riddled with Mafia influence", covering up a number of ], ], and working with the CIA and the ] to prevent the rise of the left.<ref name="guardian"/><ref name="od" /> | |||
=== Television linked to cultural alienation === | |||
Pasolini was angered by ] and cultural domination of the ] (around ]) over other regions, especially the ].{{citation needed|reason=<!--These lines are a complete distortion of Pasolini's thoughts against the capitalist-consumerist dominion and not against the cultural hegemony of a part of Italy over the rest of it-->|date=July 2011}} He felt this was accomplished through the power of television. A debate TV programme recorded in 1971, where he denounced censorship, was not actually aired until the day following his murder in November 1975. In a PCI reform plan that he drew up in September and October 1975, among the desirable measures to be implemented, he cited the abolition of television.<ref name="Siciliano, Enzo. 2014, pp. 388-389"/> | |||
=== Others === | |||
] and ] during an ] demonstration in Rome in September 1975]] | |||
Pasolini opposed the gradual disappearance of ] by writing some of his poetry in ], the regional language of his childhood. His opposition to the liberalization of abortion law made him unpopular on the left.<ref>{{cite web |last=Liukkonen |first=Petri |url=http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/pasolini.htm |title=Pier Paolo Pasolini |website=Books and Writers (kirjasto.sci.fi) |publisher=] Public Library |location=Finland |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060307182247/http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/pasolini.htm |archive-date=7 March 2006 |url-status=dead}}</ref> | |||
After 1968, Pasolini engaged with the ], ], and liberal ] (''Partito Radicale''). He involved himself in ] with party leader ],<ref name="od" /><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.radioradicale.it/exagora/conversation-with-pier-paolo-pasolini |title=Conversation with Pier Paolo Pasolini |author=<!--Not stated--> |website=] |access-date=7 June 2018}}</ref> supported the Party's initiative calling for eight ]s on various liberalising reforms,<ref name="rr">{{cite news |last=Pasolini |first=Pier Paolo |date=1 January 1975 |title=L'aborto il coito |trans-title=Abortion, Copulation |url=http://www.radioradicale.it/exagora/abortion-copulation |work=] |access-date=8 June 2018 |archive-date=12 June 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180612142021/http://www.radioradicale.it/exagora/abortion-copulation |url-status=dead}}</ref> and had accepted an invitation to speak at the Party's congress before he was killed.<ref name="jacobin" /> Despite supporting the holding of a referendum on the decriminalisation of abortion, he was opposed to actually decriminalising it,<ref name="rr" /> and he also criticised the Party's understanding of democratic activism as being a matter of equalising access to capitalist markets for the working class and other ] groups.<ref>{{cite book |last=Rumble |first=Patrick |year=1996 |title=Allegories of Contamination: Pier Paolo Pasolini's Trilogy of Life |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8YyhCgAAQBAJ&q=%22pier+paolo+pasolini%22+and+%22radical+party%22&pg=PA136 |series=Toronto Italian Studies |publisher=] |page=136 |isbn=9780802072191 |access-date=8 June 2018}}</ref> In an interview he gave shortly before his death, Pasolini stated he frequently disagreed with the Party.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Colombo |first1=Furio |last2=Battista |first2=Anna |date=8 November 1975 |title=Siamo tutti in pericolo |trans-title=We are all in danger |url=http://irenebrination.typepad.com/files/pierpaolopasolini_furiocolombointerview_1975_byabattista.pdf|work=] |access-date=8 June 2018}}</ref> He continued to give qualified support to the PCI.<ref name="od" /> in June 1975, he said that he would still vote for the PCI because he felt it was "an island where critical consciousness is always desperately defended: and where human behaviour has been still able to preserve the old dignity", and in his final months he became close to the Rome section of the ]. A Federation activist, Vincenzo Cerami, delivered the speech he was due to give at the Radical Party congress: in it, Pasolini confirmed his Marxism and his support for the PCI.<ref name="jacobin" /> | |||
Outside of Italy, Pasolini took a particular interest in the ], seeing parallels between life among the Italian underclass and in the third world, going so far as to declare that ] was the capital of three-quarters of the world and half of Italy. He was also positive about the ] in the United States, predicting that it would "lead to an original form of non-Marxist Socialism" and writing that the movement reminded him of the Italian Resistance. Pasolini saw these two areas of struggle as inter-linked: after visiting ] he stated that "the core of the struggle for the Third World revolution is really America".<ref name="jacobin" /> | |||
== {{anchor|Murder}}Murder and death == | |||
Pasolini was murdered on 2 November 1975 at a beach in ].<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://ilglobo.com.au/news/33313/the-violent-death-of-inconvenient-intellect-pier-paolo-pasolini/|title=The violent death of "inconvenient" intellect, Pier Paolo Pasolini — Italianmedia|website=ilglobo.com.au|access-date=October 20, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200811183745/https://ilglobo.com/news/the-violent-death-of-inconvenient-intellect-pier-paolo-pasolini-33313/|archive-date=August 11, 2020}}</ref> Almost unrecognizable, Pasolini was savagely beaten and also run over several times with his own car. Multiple bones were broken and his ] were crushed by what appeared to have been a metal bar.<ref name=":0" /><ref>{{cite book |last=Barber |first=Stephen |author-link=Stephen Barber (writer) |date=July 17, 2020 |title=The Massacre Game Pasolini: Terminal Film, Text, Words |publisher=Elektron Ebooks |isbn=9781909923072}}</ref> An ] revealed that his body had been partially burned with gasoline after his death. The crime was long viewed as a ]-style ], one that was extremely unlikely to have been carried out by only one person. Pasolini was buried in ]. | |||
Giuseppe "Pino" Pelosi (1958–2017), then 17 years old, was caught driving Pasolini's car and confessed to the murder. He was convicted and sentenced to 9 years in prison in 1976,<ref name=":0" /> initially with "unknown others", but this phrase was later removed from the verdict.<ref name="guardian">{{cite web |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/24/who-really-killed-pier-paolo-pasolini-venice-film-festival-biennale-abel-ferrara |title=Who really killed Pier Paolo Pasolini? |last=Vulliamy |first=Ed |date=24 August 2014 |work=] |access-date=12 May 2017}}</ref><ref name="independent">{{cite news |last=Gumbell |first=Andrew |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/who-killed-pasolini-1602381.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220526/https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/who-killed-pasolini-1602381.html |archive-date=26 May 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |title=Who killed Pasolini? |work=] |date=23 September 1995 |access-date=25 May 2015}}</ref> Twenty-nine years later, on 7 May 2005, Pelosi retracted his confession, which he said had been made under the threat of violence to his family.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2024 |title=Who really murdered Pier Paolo Pasolini? |url=https://www.ft.com/content/c42a46b1-5e3e-44d8-af6e-81831772b7af |website=Financial Times}}</ref> He claimed that three people "with a ] accent" had committed the murder, while further insulting Pasolini as a "dirty communist".<ref>{{cite news |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/film/4529877.stm|title=Pasolini death inquiry reopened |last=Cataldi |first=Benedetto |date=5 May 2005 |website=]}}</ref> | |||
Other evidence uncovered in 2005 suggested that Pasolini had been murdered by an ]ist. Testimony by his friend Sergio Citti indicated that some of the rolls of film from '']'' had been stolen, and that Pasolini planned to meet with and negotiate its return from the thieves on 2 November 1975 following a visit to ], Sweden.<ref>{{cite web |title=Asesinato de Pasolini, nueva investigación |url=http://www.razon.com.mx/spip.php?article29280 |work=La Razón |access-date=4 July 2012 |language=es |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170702125218/http://www.razon.com.mx/spip.php?article29280 |archive-date=2 July 2017 |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Pasolini de nuevo |url=http://www.milenio.com/cdb/doc/impreso/8742252 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20120629014013/http://www.milenio.com/cdb/doc/impreso/8742252 |url-status=dead |archive-date=29 June 2012 |work=Sentido contrario |publisher=Grupo Milenio |access-date=4 July 2012 |author=Héctor Rivera|language=it|date=28 March 2010}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922–1975) |url=http://www.cinematismo.com/biografias/pier-paolo-pasolini-1922-1975/ |publisher=Cinematismo |access-date=4 July 2012 |language=it |archive-date=12 August 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140812102235/http://www.cinematismo.com/biografias/pier-paolo-pasolini-1922-1975/ |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>. Google, 2 April 2010. Retrieved 22 May 2014.</ref> Citti's investigation uncovered additional evidence, including a bloody wooden stick and an eyewitness who said he saw a group of men pull Pasolini from the car.<ref name="guardian"/><ref name="independent"/> The Rome police reopened the murder as a ] after Pelosi's retraction, but the ]s responsible for the investigation found that the new elements were insufficient to justify a continued inquiry. As of 2023, a plea to reopen the case was filed based on DNA analysis and links the murder to the ], a ] with close ties to ], as the probable culprits.<ref name=":0" /> | |||
== Legacy == | |||
As a director, Pasolini created a ] ], showing a sad reality. Many people did not want to see such portrayals in artistic work for public distribution. '']'' (1962), featuring ] and telling the story of a prostitute and her son, was an affront to the public ideals of the morality of those times. His works, with their unequalled poetry applied to cruel realities, showed that such realities were less distant from most daily lives, and contributed to changes in the Italian psyche.<ref name="JAM8">{{cite book |title=Il Caos (collected articles) |author=Pier Paolo Pasolini |year=1995 |publisher=] |location=Rome |language=it}}</ref> | |||
Pasolini's work often engendered disapproval perhaps primarily because of his frequent focus on sexual behaviour, and the contrast between what he presented and what was publicly sanctioned. While Pasolini's poetry often dealt with his gay love interests, this was not the only, or even main, theme. His interest in and use of Italian dialects should also be noted. Much of the poetry was about his highly revered mother. He depicted certain corners of the contemporary reality as few other poets could do. His poetry, which took some time before it was translated, was not as well known outside Italy as were his films. A collection in English was published in 1996.<ref name="noonday">{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pqzRAIwoq8EC&q=pier+paolo+pasolini+collected+poems|title=Collected Poems|author=Pier Paolo Pasolini|year=1996|publisher=Noonday Press|isbn=9780374524692}}</ref> | |||
Pasolini also developed a philosophy of language mainly related to his studies on cinema.<ref name="JAM7">{{cite book | |||
|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=v0-pPQAACAAJ&q=pier+paolo+pasolini |title=Heretical empiricism |last=Pasolini |first=Pier Paolo |date=1988–2005 |publisher=New Academia Publishing |isbn=9780976704225}}</ref> This theoretical and critical activity was another hotly debated topic. His collected articles and responses are still available today.<ref name="JAM8" /><ref>{{cite book |title=Dibattiti sui film |author=A. Covi |year=1971 |publisher=Gregoriana |location=Padova |language=it}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=Scrittori e Popolo – il populismo nella letteratura italiana contemporanea |author=A. Asor Rosa |year=1988 |publisher=Gregoriana |location=Torino |language=it}}</ref> | |||
These studies can be considered the foundation of his artistic point of view: he believed that the language—such as English, Italian, dialect or other—is a rigid system in which human thought is trapped. He also thought that the cinema is the "written" language of reality which, like any other written language, enables man to see things from the point of view of truth.<ref name="JAM7"/> | |||
His films won awards at the ], ], ], Italian National Syndicate for Film Journalists, ], Kinema Junpo Awards, International Catholic Film Office and ]. '']'' was nominated for the United Nations Award of the ] (BAFTA) in 1968. | |||
== Filmography == | |||
{{Expand section|date=November 2024}} | |||
{| class="wikitable plainrowheaders" style="margin-right:auto; margin-right:auto; width:100%;" style="text-align:center; | |||
! scope=col | Year | |||
! scope=col | Title | |||
! scope=col | Writer | |||
! scope=col | Director | |||
! scope=col | Soundtrack | |||
! scope=col | Role | |||
! scope=col | Notes | |||
|- | |||
|- | |||
|- | |||
|1955 | |||
|'']'' | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{no}} | |||
| {{no}} | |||
|— | |||
| | |||
|- | |||
|1957 | |||
|'']'' | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{no}} | |||
| {{no}} | |||
|— | |||
| | |||
|- | |||
|1958 | |||
|'']'' | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{no}} | |||
| {{no}} | |||
|— | |||
| | |||
|- | |||
|1959 | |||
|'']'' | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{no}} | |||
| {{no}} | |||
|— | |||
| | |||
|- | |||
|rowspan="5"|1960 | |||
|'']'' | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{no}} | |||
| {{no}} | |||
|— | |||
| | |||
|- | |||
|'']'' | |||
| {{no}} | |||
| {{no}} | |||
| {{no}} | |||
| Monco | |||
| | |||
|- | |||
|'']'' | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{no}} | |||
| {{no}} | |||
|— | |||
| | |||
|- | |||
|'']'' | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{no}} | |||
| {{no}} | |||
|— | |||
| | |||
|- | |||
|'']'' | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{no}} | |||
| {{no}} | |||
|— | |||
| | |||
|- | |||
|rowspan="2"|1961 | |||
|'']'' | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{no}} | |||
|— | |||
| | |||
|- | |||
|'']'' | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{no}} | |||
| {{no}} | |||
|— | |||
| | |||
|- | |||
|1962 | |||
|'']'' | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{no}} | |||
|— | |||
| | |||
|- | |||
|rowspan="2"|1963 | |||
|'']'' | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{no}} | |||
|— | |||
|{{nowrap|Segment: "La ricotta"}} | |||
|- | |||
|'']'' | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{no}} | |||
|— | |||
|Documentary | |||
|- | |||
|1964 | |||
|'']'' | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{no}} | |||
|— | |||
| | |||
|- | |||
|rowspan="2"|1965 | |||
|'']'' | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{no}} | |||
|The Interviewer | |||
|Documentary | |||
|- | |||
|'']'' | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{no}} | |||
|Himself | |||
|Documentary | |||
|- | |||
|1966 | |||
|'']'' | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
|— | |||
| | |||
|- | |||
|rowspan="3"|1967 | |||
|'']'' | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{no}} | |||
| {{no}} | |||
|Don Juan | |||
| | |||
|- | |||
|'']'' | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{no}} | |||
|— | |||
|Segment: "La Terra vista dalla Luna" | |||
|- | |||
|'']'' | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{no}} | |||
|High Priest | |||
| | |||
|- | |||
|rowspan="3"|1968 | |||
|'']'' | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{no}} | |||
|— | |||
| | |||
|- | |||
|'']'' | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{no}} | |||
|Himself | |||
|Documentary | |||
|- | |||
|'']'' | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
|— | |||
|Segment: "Cosa sono le nuvole?" | |||
|- | |||
|rowspan="3"|1969 | |||
|'']'' | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{no}} | |||
|— | |||
|Segment: "La sequenza del fiore di carta" | |||
|- | |||
|'']'' | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{no}} | |||
|— | |||
| | |||
|- | |||
|'']'' | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{no}} | |||
|— | |||
| | |||
|- | |||
|rowspan="2"|1970 | |||
|'']'' | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{no}} | |||
| {{no}} | |||
|— | |||
| | |||
|- | |||
|'']'' | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{no}} | |||
|Narrator (voice) | |||
|Documentary | |||
|- | |||
|1971 | |||
|'']'' | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{no}} | |||
|Giotto's Pupil | |||
|First in the ''Trilogy of Life.'' | |||
|- | |||
|1972 | |||
|'']'' | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
|Chaucer | |||
|Second in the ''Trilogy of Life.'' | |||
|- | |||
|1973 | |||
|'']'' | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{no}} | |||
| {{no}} | |||
|— | |||
| | |||
|- | |||
|1974 | |||
|'']'' | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{no}} | |||
|— | |||
|Third in the ''Trilogy of Life.'' | |||
|- | |||
|1975 | |||
|'']'' | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{yes}} | |||
| {{no}} | |||
|— | |||
|Released three weeks after his murder. | |||
|} | |||
== In popular culture == | |||
Many documentaries and films have been released since the time of his murder, some of which include: | |||
* ''Das Mitleid ist gestorben'', a documentary directed by Ebbo Demant and released in 1978. | |||
* In 1986, the avant-garde band ] released their album '']'', which includes the track "Ostia (The Death of Pasolini)" in tribute to the late filmmaker. | |||
* '']'', directed by ] in 1995. The film reconstructs the trial of Pino Pelosi, accused of Pasolini's murder. | |||
* '']'', made by ] in 2005, was dedicated to Pasolini. | |||
* '']'', directed by ]. A 2014 biopic directed about Pasolini, with ] in the lead role. It was selected to compete for the ] at the ].<ref name="Venice">{{cite web |url=http://www.labiennale.org/en/cinema/71st-festival/line-up/off-sel/venezia71 |title=International competition of feature films |access-date=24 July 2014 |work=Venice |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141006083927/http://www.labiennale.org/en/cinema/71st-festival/line-up/off-sel/venezia71/ |archive-date=6 October 2014 }}</ref><ref name="Deadline">{{cite magazine |url=https://deadline.com/2014/07/venice-film-festival-lineup-2014-movie-list-808803/ |title=Venice Film Festival Lineup Announced |access-date=24 July 2014 |magazine=Deadline Hollywood}}</ref> | |||
* ''PPPasolini'', directed by Malga Kubiak, a drama movie based on the story of Pier Paolo Pasolini's life and death, released in 2015. The movie was screened at the seventh edition of the LGBT Film Festival in Warsaw, and received a People's Choice Award at the festival.<ref name="LGBT Film Festival In Warsaw">{{cite web |url=http://www.lgbtfestival.pl/program---program.html |title=7th edition of LGBT Film Festival in Warsaw |access-date=5 April 2016 |work=Warszawa |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160414034113/http://www.lgbtfestival.pl/program---program.html |archive-date=14 April 2016 }}</ref> | |||
* '']'', directed by his former collaborator ], a 2016 biopic on the last hours of Pasolini's life starring ] as Pasolini.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.huffingtonpost.it/2016/03/02/pier-paolo-pasolini-la-macchinazione-david-grieco_n_9365220.html|title=Pier Paolo Pasolini: "La Macchinazione", film di David Grieco, chiede la verità sulla morte del poeta|work=]|date=2 March 2016|access-date=3 August 2019}}</ref> | |||
== See also == | |||
* ] | |||
* '']'' | |||
* ] | |||
== Notes == | |||
{{Notelist}} | |||
== |
== References == | ||
{{Reflist}} | {{Reflist}} | ||
== Further reading == | |||
==References== | |||
<!-- ISSNs or ISBNs needed for all but one of the below refs --> | |||
* Aichele, George. "Translation as De-canonization: Matthew's Gospel According to Pasolini - filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini - Critical Essay." ''Cross Currents'' (2002). FindArticles. | |||
* Aichele, George. "Translation as De-canonization: Matthew's Gospel According to Pasolini – filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini – Critical Essay". ''Cross Currents'' (2002). | |||
* Distefano, John. "Picturing Pasolini." ''Art Journal'' (1997). | |||
* Chiesa, Lorenzo. ''Pasolini and the Ugliness of Bodies''. In: Polezzi, Loredana and Ross, Charlotte, eds. In Corpore: Bodies in Post-Unification Italy. Farleigh Dickinson University Press, Madison, pp. 208–227. {{ISBN| 978-0-8386-4164-4}}. | |||
* Eloit, Audrene. "Oedipus Rex by Pier Paolo Pasolini The Palimpsest: Rewriting and the Creation of Pasolini's Cinematic Language." ''Literature Film Quarterly'' (2004). FindArticles. | |||
* Distefano, John. "Picturing Pasolini", ''Art Journal'' (1997). | |||
* Fabbro, Elena (ed.). ''Il mito greco nell'opera di Pasolini''. Atti del Convegno Udine-Casarsa della Delizia, 24-26 ottobre 2002. Udine: Forum (2004). ISBN 88-8420-230-2 | |||
* {{cite book |last1=Eberstadt |first1=Fernanda |author1-link=Fernanda Eberstadt |title=Bite Your Friends: Stories of the Body Militant |date=2024 |publisher=Europa Editions |pages=195–242 |isbn=979-8-88966-006-4}} | |||
* Forni, Kathleen. "A "cinema of poetry": What Pasolini Did to Chancer's Canterbury Tales." ''Literature Film Quarterly'' (2002). FindArticles. | |||
* Eloit, Audrene. "Oedipus Rex by Pier Paolo Pasolini The Palimpsest: Rewriting and the Creation of Pasolini's Cinematic Language". ''Literature Film Quarterly'' (2004). | |||
* Frisch, Anette. "Francesco Vezzolini: Pasolini Reloaded." Interview, Rutgers University Alexander Library, New Brunswick, NJ. | |||
* Fabbro, Elena (ed.). ''Il mito greco nell'opera di Pasolini''. Atti del Convegno Udine-Casarsa della Delizia, 24–26 ottobre 2002. Udine: Forum (2004). {{ISBN|88-8420-230-2}}. | |||
* Green, Martin. "The Dialectic Adaptation." | |||
* Forni, Kathleen. "A "Cinema of Poetry": What Pasolini Did to Chancer's Canterbury Tales". ''Literature Film Quarterly'' (2002). | |||
* Greene, Naomi. ''Pier Paolo Pasilini: Cinema as Heresy''. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1990. | |||
* Frisch, Anette. "Francesco Vezzolini: Pasolini Reloaded". Interview, Rutgers University Alexander Library, New Brunswick, NJ. | |||
* Meyer-Krahmer, Benjamin. "Transmediality and Pastiche as Techniques in Pasolini’s Art Production", in: P.P.P. - Pier Paolo Pasolini and death, eds. Bernhart Schwenk, Michael Semff, Ostfildern 2005, p. 109 - 118 | |||
* Ginzburg, Carlo, Safran, Yehuda, Sherer Daniel. "An Interview with Carlo Ginzburg, by Yehuda Safran and Daniel Sherer". Potlatch 5 (2022), special issue on Carlo Ginzburg. Discussion of Ginzburg's meeting with Pasolini and Elsa Morante and Pasolini's interest in Ginzburg's work as a historian of Friuli. | |||
* Green, Martin. "The Dialectic Adaptation". | |||
* Greene, Naomi. ''Pier Paolo Pasolini: Cinema as Heresy''. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1990. | |||
* Hamza, Agon. ''Althusser and Pasolini - Philosophy, Marxism and Film''. Palgrave, NY (2016). {{ISBN|978-1-137-56651-5}}. | |||
* Meyer-Krahmer, Benjamin. "Transmediality and Pastiche as Techniques in Pasolini's Art Production", in: P.P.P. – Pier Paolo Pasolini and death, eds. Bernhart Schwenk, Michael Semff, Ostfildern 2005, pp. 109–118. | |||
* Passannanti, Erminia, ''Il corpo & il potere. Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma di Pier Paolo Pasolini'', Prima edizione, Troubador, Leicester, 2004; Seconda Edizione, Joker, Savona 2008. | * Passannanti, Erminia, ''Il corpo & il potere. Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma di Pier Paolo Pasolini'', Prima edizione, Troubador, Leicester, 2004; Seconda Edizione, Joker, Savona 2008. | ||
* Passannanti, Erminia,''Il Cristo del'Eresia. Pier Paolo Pasolini. Cinema e Censura'', Joker, Savona 2009. | * Passannanti, Erminia, ''Il Cristo del'Eresia. Pier Paolo Pasolini. Cinema e Censura'', Joker, Savona 2009. | ||
* Passannanti, Erminia, ''La ricotta. Il Sacro trasgredito. Il cinema di Pier Paolo Pasolini e la censura religiosa'', 2009 also published in "Italy on Screen" (Peter Lang Ed., 2011). The book contains excerpts from the 1962 court trial. | * Passannanti, Erminia, ''La ricotta. Il Sacro trasgredito. Il cinema di Pier Paolo Pasolini e la censura religiosa'', 2009 was also published in "Italy on Screen" (Peter Lang Ed., 2011). The book contains excerpts from the 1962 court trial. | ||
* Pugh, Tison. "Chaucerian Fabliaux, Cinematic Fabliau: Pier Paolo Pasolini's I racconti di Canterbury |
* Pugh, Tison. "Chaucerian Fabliaux, Cinematic Fabliau: Pier Paolo Pasolini's I racconti di Canterbury", ''Literature Film Quarterly'' (2004). | ||
* Restivo, Angelo. ''The Cinema of Economic Miracles: Visuality and Modernization in the Italian Art Film''. London: Duke UP, 2002. | * Restivo, Angelo. ''The Cinema of Economic Miracles: Visuality and Modernization in the Italian Art Film''. London: Duke UP, 2002. | ||
* Rohdie, Sam. ''The Passion of Pier Paolo Pasolini''. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana UP, 1995. | * Rohdie, Sam. ''The Passion of Pier Paolo Pasolini''. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana UP, 1995. | ||
* Rumble, Patrick A. ''Allegories of contamination: Pier Paolo Pasolini's Trilogy of life''. Toronto: University of Toronto |
* Rumble, Patrick A. ''Allegories of contamination: Pier Paolo Pasolini's Trilogy of life''. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996. | ||
* Schwartz, Barth D. ''Pasolini Requiem''. 1st ed. New York: Pantheon Books, 1992. | * Schwartz, Barth D. ''Pasolini Requiem''. 1st ed. New York: Pantheon Books, 1992. | ||
* ]. ''Pasolini: A Biography''. Trans. John Shepley. New York: Random House, 1982. | * ]. ''Pasolini: A Biography''. Trans. John Shepley. New York: Random House, 1982. | ||
* Thompson, N.S., ''Pier Paolo Pasolini: Poet and Prophet'', in Murray, Glen (ed.), '']'' No. 7, Winter 1981 - 82, pp. 30 – 32. | |||
* Viano, Maurizio. ''A Certain Realism: Making Use of Pasolini's Film Theory and Practice''. Berkeley: University of California P, 1993. | |||
* Tusa, Giovanbattista. "The Pasolinian Century", in: Hildebrandt, Toni and Tusa, Giovanbattista (eds.), ''PPPP. Pier Paolo Pasolini Philosopher''. Mimesis International, 2022, pp. 317–323. | |||
* Viano, Maurizio. ''A Certain Realism: Making Use of Pasolini's Film Theory and Practice''. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. | |||
* Willimon, William H. "Faithful to the script", ''Christian Century'' (2004). | * Willimon, William H. "Faithful to the script", ''Christian Century'' (2004). | ||
== External links == | == External links == | ||
{{Commons category}} | |||
{{Wikiquote}} | |||
* {{IMDb name|0001596}} | * {{IMDb name|0001596}} | ||
* {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150618011911/http://bombmagazine.org/article/2000039/pier-paolo-pasolini-s-em-selected-poetry-em-edited-and-translated-by-stephen-sartarelli |date=18 June 2015 }} | |||
* | |||
* {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130416010528/http://www.filmgalerie451.de/dvd/regisseure/pasolini/ |date=16 April 2013 }} | |||
* , Italian website with extensive commentary | |||
* , |
* , Italian Website with Extensive Commentary | ||
* , Senses of Cinema | |||
* | |||
* | |||
* Guy Flatley: , MovieCrazed | |||
* Guy Flatley: {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160303172047/http://www.moviecrazed.com/outpast/pasolini.html |date=3 March 2016 }}, MovieCrazed | |||
* , ZMag | |||
* , ZMag | |||
* | |||
* | * | ||
* Original Italian |
* – Original Italian Text. | ||
* |
* {{YouTube|A3ACSmZTejQ|Video (in Italian): Pasolini on the Destructive Impact of Television}} (Interrupted and Half-Censored by ]) | ||
* | * | ||
* | * | ||
* , Dennis Lim, '']'', 26 December 2012 | * , Dennis Lim, '']'', 26 December 2012 | ||
{{ |
{{Pier Paolo Pasolini}} | ||
{{Prix du scénario}} | |||
{{Nastro d'Argento Best Director}} | {{Nastro d'Argento Best Director}} | ||
{{Viareggio Prize}} | {{Viareggio Prize}} | ||
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|NAME= Pasolini, Pier Paolo | |||
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|SHORT DESCRIPTION= Italian novelist, poet, intellectual, film director, journalist, linguist, philosopher | |||
|DATE OF BIRTH= 5 March 1922 | |||
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|DATE OF DEATH= 2 November 1975 | |||
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Latest revision as of 14:32, 1 January 2025
Italian writer, filmmaker, poet, and intellectual (1922–1975) "Pasolini" redirects here. For other people with that surname, see Pasolini (surname). For the 2014 film, see Pasolini (film).
Pier Paolo Pasolini | |
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Pasolini in 1964 | |
Born | (1922-03-05)5 March 1922 Bologna, Kingdom of Italy |
Died | 2 November 1975(1975-11-02) (aged 53) Ostia, Italy |
Occupation |
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Alma mater | University of Bologna |
Signature | |
Pier Paolo Pasolini (Italian: [ˈpjɛr ˈpaːolo pazoˈliːni]; 5 March 1922 – 2 November 1975) was an Italian poet, film director, writer, actor and playwright. He is considered one of the defining public intellectuals in 20th-century Italian history, influential both as an artist and a political figure. He is known for directing The Gospel According to St. Matthew, the films from Trilogy of Life (The Decameron, The Canterbury Tales and Arabian Nights) and Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom.
A controversial personality due to his straightforward style, Pasolini's legacy remains contentious. Openly gay while also a vocal advocate for heritage language revival, cultural conservatism, and Christian values in his youth, Pasolini became an avowed Marxist shortly after the end of World War II. He began voicing extremely harsh criticism of Italian petty bourgeoisie and what he saw as the Americanization, cultural degeneration, and greed-driven consumerism taking over Italian culture. As a filmmaker, Pasolini often juxtaposed socio-political polemics with an extremely graphic and critical examination of taboo sexual matters. A prominent protagonist of the Roman intellectual scene during the post-war era, Pasolini became an established and major figure in European literature and cinema.
Pasolini's unsolved and extremely brutal abduction, torture, and murder at Ostia in November 1975 prompted an outcry in Italy, where it continues to be a matter of heated debate. Recent leads by Italian cold case investigators suggest a contract killing by the Banda della Magliana, a criminal organisation with close links to far-right terrorism, as the most likely cause.
Biography
Early life
Pier Paolo Pasolini was born in Bologna, Italy. He was the son of elementary-school teacher Susanna Colussi, named after her great-grandmother, and Carlo Alberto Pasolini, a lieutenant in the Royal Italian Army; they had married in 1921. Pasolini was born in 1922 and named after a paternal uncle. His family moved to Conegliano in 1923, then to Belluno in 1925, where their second son, Guidalberto, was born. In 1926, Pasolini's father was arrested for gambling debts. His mother moved with the children to her family's home in Casarsa della Delizia, in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region. In that same year, his father first detained, then identified Anteo Zamboni as the would-be assassin of Benito Mussolini following his assassination attempt. Carlo Alberto was persuaded of the virtues of Italian fascism.
Pasolini began writing poems at age seven, inspired by the natural beauty of Casarsa. One of his early influences was the work of Arthur Rimbaud. His father was transferred to Idria in the Julian March (now in Slovenia) in 1931; in 1933 they moved again to Cremona in Lombardy, and later to Scandiano and Reggio Emilia. Pasolini found it difficult to adapt to all these dislocations, although he enlarged his poetry and literature readings (Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Coleridge, Novalis) and left behind the religious fervour of his early years. In the Reggio Emilia high school, he met his first true friend, Luciano Serra. The two met again in Bologna, where Pasolini spent seven years completing high school. Here he cultivated new passions, including football. With other friends, including Ermes Parini, Franco Farolfi, Elio Meli, he formed a group dedicated to literary discussions.
In 1939, Pasolini graduated and entered the Literature College of the University of Bologna, discovering new themes such as philology and aesthetics of figurative arts. He also frequented the local cinema club. Pasolini always showed his friends a virile and strong exterior, totally hiding his interior turmoil. In his poems of this period, Pasolini started to include fragments in Friulan, a minority language he did not speak but learned after he had begun to write poetry in it. "I learnt it as a sort of mystic act of love, a kind of félibrisme, like the Provençal poets." In 1943, he founded with fellow students the Academiuta della lenga furlana (Academy of the Friulan Language). As a young adult, Pasolini identified as an atheist.
In the waning years of World War II, Pasolini was drafted into the Italian Army. After his regiment was captured by the Germans following Italy's surrender, he escaped and fled to the small town of Casarsa where he remained for several years.
Early poetry
In 1942, Pasolini published at his own expense a collection of poems in Friulan, Poesie a Casarsa, which he had written at the age of eighteen. The work was noted and appreciated by such intellectuals and critics as Gianfranco Contini, Alfonso Gatto and Antonio Russi. Pasolini's pictures had also been well received. He was chief editor of a magazine called Il Setaccio ('The Sieve'), but was fired after conflicts with the director, who was aligned with the Fascist regime. A trip to Germany helped him also to perceive the "provincial" status of Italian culture in that period. These experiences led Pasolini to revise his opinion about the cultural politics of Fascism and to switch gradually to a Communist position.
Pasolini's family took shelter in Casarsa, considered a more tranquil place to wait for the conclusion of the Second World War, a decision common among Italian military families. Here he joined a group of other young enthusiasts of the Friulan language who wanted to give Casarsa Friulan a status equal to that of Udine, the official regional standard. From May 1944, they issued a magazine entitled Stroligùt di cà da l'aga. In the meantime, Casarsa suffered Allied bombardments and forced enlistments by the Italian Social Republic, as well as partisan activity.
Pasolini tried to distance himself from these events. Starting in October 1943, Pasolini, his mother and other colleagues taught students unable to reach the schools in Pordenone or Udine. This educational workshop was considered illegal and broke up in February 1944. It was here that Pasolini had his first experience of homosexual attraction to one of his students. His brother Guido, aged 19, joined the Party of Action and their Brigate Osoppo, taking to the bush near Slovenia. On 12 February 1945, Guido was killed in an ambush planted by the Brigate Garibaldi serving in the lines of Josip Broz Tito's Yugoslavian guerrillas. This devastated Pasolini and his mother.
Six days after his brother's death, Pasolini and others founded the Friulan Language Academy (Academiuta di lenga furlana). Meanwhile, on account of Guido's death, Pasolini's father returned to Italy from his detention period in November 1945, settling in Casarsa. That same month, Pasolini graduated from university after completing a final thesis about the work of Giovanni Pascoli (1855–1912), an Italian poet and classical scholar.
In 1946, Pasolini published a small poetry collection, I Diarii ('The Diaries'), with the Academiuta. In October he traveled to Rome. The following May he began the so-called Quaderni Rossi, handwritten in old school exercise books with red covers. He completed a drama in Italian, Il Cappellano. His poetry collection, I Pianti ('The cries'), was also published by the Academiuta.
Rome
In January 1950, Pasolini moved to Rome with his mother Susanna to start a new life. He was acquitted of two indecency charges in 1950 and 1952. After one year sheltered in a maternal uncle's flat next to Piazza Mattei, Pasolini and his 59-year-old mother moved to a run-down suburb called Rebibbia, next to a prison, living there for three years; he transferred his Friulan countryside inspiration to this Roman suburb, one of the infamous borgate where poor proletarian immigrants lived, often in horrendous sanitary and social conditions. Instead of asking for help from other writers, Pasolini preferred to go his own way.
Pasolini found a job working in the Cinecittà film studios and sold his books in the bancarelle ('sidewalk shops') of Rome. In 1951, with the help of the Abruzzese-language poet Vittorio Clemente, he found a job as a secondary school teacher in Ciampino, just outside the capital. He had a long commute involving two train changes and earned a meagre salary of 27,000 lire.
Career
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Writing
In 1954, Pasolini, who now worked for the literary section of Cinecittà, left his teaching job and moved to the Monteverde quarter. At this point, his cousin Graziella moved in. They also accommodated Pasolini's ailing, cirrhotic father Carlo Alberto, who died in 1958. Pasolini published La meglio gioventù, his first important collection of Friulan poems. His first novel, Ragazzi di vita (English: Hustlers), which dealt with the Roman lumpenproletariat, was published in 1955. The work had great success but was poorly received by the Italian Communist Party (PCI) establishment and, most importantly, by the Italian government. It initiated a lawsuit for "obscenity" against Pasolini and his editor, Garzanti. Although exonerated, Pasolini became a target of insinuations, especially in the tabloid press.
In 1955, together with Francesco Leonetti, Roberto Roversi and others, Pasolini edited and published a poetry magazine called Officina. The magazine closed in 1959 after fourteen issues. That year he also published his second novel, Una vita violenta, which unlike his first was embraced by the Communist cultural sphere: he subsequently wrote a column titled Dialoghi con Passolini (meaning Passolini in Dialogue), for the PCI magazine Vie Nuove from May 1960 to September 1965, which were published in book form in 1977 as Le belle bandiere (The Beautiful Flags). In the late 1960s Pasolini edited an advice column in the weekly news magazine Tempo.
In 1966, Pasolini wrote a screenplay for a never-produced film about the apostle Saint Paul which he subsequently revised. Pasolini's screenplay was intended to depict Paul as a modern contemporary without modifying any of Paul's statements. In Pasolini's story, Paul is a fascist Vichy France collaborator who becomes illuminated while traveling to Franco's Spain and joins the antifascist French resistance, an event which serves as the modern analogue for the Pauline conversion. The screenplay follows Paul as he preaches resistance in Italy, Spain, Germany, and New York (where he is betrayed, arrested, and executed). As philosopher Alain Badiou writes, "The most surprising thing in all this is the way in which Paul's texts are transplanted unaltered, and with an almost unfathomable naturalness, into the situations in which Pasolini deploys them: war, fascism, American capitalism, the petty debates of Italian intelligentsia"
In 1970, Pasolini bought an old castle near Viterbo, several miles north of Rome, where he began to write his last novel, Il Petrolio, in which he denounced obscure dealing in the highest levels of government and the corporate world (Eni, CIA, the Mafia, etc.). The novel-documentary was left incomplete at his death. In 1972, Pasolini started to collaborate with the far-left association Lotta Continua, producing a documentary, 12 dicembre, concerning the Piazza Fontana bombing. The following year he began a collaboration for Italy's most renowned newspaper, Il Corriere della Sera. At the beginning of 1975 Garzanti published a collection of his critical essays, Scritti corsari ('Corsair Writings').
Narrative
- Ragazzi di vita (The Ragazzi, 1955)
- Una vita violenta (A Violent Life, 1959)
- Il sogno di una cosa (1962)
- Amado Mio—Atti Impuri (1982, originally written in 1948)
- Alì dagli occhi azzurri (1965)
- Teorema (1968)
- Reality (The Poets' Encyclopedia, 1979)
- Petrolio (1992, incomplete)
Poetry
- La meglio gioventù (1954)
- Le ceneri di Gramsci (1957)
- L'usignolo della chiesa cattolica (1958)
- La religione del mio tempo (1961)
- Poesia in forma di rosa (1964)
- Trasumanar e organizzar (1971)
- La nuova gioventù (1975)
- Roman Poems. Pocket Poets No. 41 (1986)
- The Selected Poetry of Pier Paolo Pasolini: A Bilingual Edition. (2014)
Essays
- Passione e ideologia (1960)
- Canzoniere italiano, poesia popolare italiana (1960)
- Empirismo eretico (1972)
- Lettere luterane (1976)
- Le belle bandiere (1977)
- Descrizioni di descrizioni (1979)
- Il caos (1979)
- La pornografia è noiosa (1979)
- Scritti corsari (1975)
- Lettere (1940–1954) (Letters, 1940–54, 1986)
Theatre
- Orgia (1968)
- Porcile (1968)
- Calderón (1973)
- Affabulazione (1977)
- Pilade (1977)
- Bestia da stile (1977)
Films
In 1957, together with Sergio Citti, Pasolini collaborated on Federico Fellini's film Nights of Cabiria, writing dialogue for the Roman dialect sections. Fellini also asked him to work on dialogue for some episodes of La dolce vita. Pasolini made his debut as an actor in The Hunchback of Rome in 1960, and co-wrote Long Night in 1943. Along with Ragazzi di vita, he had his celebrated poem Le ceneri di Gramsci published, where Pasolini voiced tormented tensions between reason and heart, as well as the existing ideological dialectics within communism, a debate over artistic freedom, socialist realism and commitment.
Pasolini's first film as director and screenwriter was Accattone in 1961, again set among Rome's marginal communities, a story of pimps, prostitutes, and thieves that contrasted with Italy's postwar economic recovery. Although Pasolini tried to distance himself from neorealism, it is considered to be a type of second neorealism. Nick Barbaro, a critic writing in the Austin Chronicle, stated it "may be the grimmest movie" he has ever seen. The film aroused controversy and scandal, with conservatives demanded stricter censorship by the government. In 1963, the episode "La ricotta", included in the anthology film Ro.Go.Pa.G., was censored and Pasolini was tried for "offence to the Italian state and religion".
During this period, Pasolini frequently travelled abroad: in 1961, with Elsa Morante and Alberto Moravia to India (where he went again seven years later); in 1962, to Sudan and Kenya; in 1963, to Ghana, Nigeria, Guinea, Jordan and Palestine (where he shot the documentary Sopralluoghi in Palestina). In 1970 he travelled again to Africa to shoot another documentary, Appunti per un'Orestiade africana. Pasolini was a member of the jury at the 16th Berlin International Film Festival in 1966. In 1967, in Venice, he met and interviewed American poet Ezra Pound. They discussed the Italian movement neoavanguardia and Pasolini read some verses from the Italian translation of Pound's Pisan Cantos.
The late 1960s and early 1970s were the era of the student movement. Pasolini, although acknowledging the students' ideological motivations, and referring to himself as a "Catholic Marxist", thought them "anthropologically middle-class" and therefore destined to fail in their attempts at revolutionary change. Regarding the Battle of Valle Giulia, which took place in Rome in March 1968, he said that he sympathized with the police, as they were "children of the poor", while the young militants were exponents of what he called "left-wing fascism". His film that year, Teorema, was shown at the Venice Film Festival in a hot political climate. Pasolini had proclaimed that the festival would be managed by the directors.
He wrote and directed the black-and-white The Gospel According to Matthew (1964). It is based on scripture, but adapted by Pasolini, and he is credited as a writer. Jesus, a barefoot peasant, is played by Enrique Irazoqui. In his 1966 film Uccellacci e uccellini (literally Bad Birds and Little Birds but translated in English as The Hawks and the Sparrows), a picaresque—and at the same time mystic—fable, Pasolini hired great Italian comedian Totò to work with Ninetto Davoli, the director's lover at the time and one of his preferred "naif" actors. It was a unique opportunity for Totò to demonstrate that he was a great dramatic actor as well. In Teorema (Theorem, 1968), starring Terence Stamp as a mysterious stranger, Pasolini depicted the sexual coming-apart of a bourgeois family. (Variations of this theme were later done by François Ozon in Sitcom, Joe Swanberg in The Zone and Takashi Miike in Visitor Q.)
Later films centred on sex-laden folklore, such as Boccaccio's Decameron (1971), Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales (1972), and Il fiore delle mille e una notte (literally The Flower of 1001 Nights, released in English as Arabian Nights, 1974). These films are usually grouped as the Trilogy of Life. While basing them on classics, Pasolini wrote the screenplays and took sole writing credit. This trilogy, prompted largely by Pasolini's attempt to show the secular sacredness of the body against man-made social controls and especially against the venal hypocrisy of the religious state (indeed, the religious characters in The Canterbury Tales are shown as pious but amorally grasping fools) were an effort at representing a state of natural sexual innocence essential to the true nature of free humanity. Alternately playfully bawdy and poetically sensuous, wildly populous, subtly symbolic and visually exquisite, the films were popular in Italy and remain perhaps his most enduringly popular works. Yet despite the fact that the trilogy as a whole is considered by many as a masterpiece, Pasolini later reviled his own creation on account of the many soft-core imitations of these three films in Italy that happened afterwards on account of the very same popularity he wound up deeply uncomfortable with. He believed that a bastardisation of his vision had taken place that amounted to a commoditisation of the body he had tried to deny in his trilogy in the first place. The disconsolation this provided is seen as one of the primary reasons for his final film, Salò, in which humans are not only seen as commodities under authoritarian control but are viewed merely as cyphers for its whims, without the free vitality of the figures in the Trilogy of Life.
His final work, Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma (Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, 1975), exceeded what most viewers could accept at the time in its explicit scenes of sexual perversity and intensely sadistic violence. Based on the novel 120 Days of Sodom by Marquis de Sade, it is considered Pasolini's most controversial film. In May 2006, Time Out's Film Guide named it the "Most Controversial Film" of all time. Salò was intended as the first film of his Trilogy of Death, followed by an aborted biopic film about Gilles de Rais.
- Note: All titles listed below were written and directed by Pasolini unless stated otherwise.
Year | Title | Adapted from | Notes | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Original | In English | |||
1961 | Accattone | Accattone | Pasolini's novel Una vita violenta. | Screenplay written in collaboration with Sergio Citti. |
1962 | Mamma Roma | Mamma Roma | Screenplay by Pasolini with additional dialogue by Citti. | |
1964 | Il vangelo secondo Matteo | The Gospel According to St. Matthew | The Gospel of Matthew. | Won the Silver Lion at the 25th Venice International Film Festival, United Nations Award at the 21st British Academy Film Awards. |
1966 | Uccellacci e uccellini | The Hawks and the Sparrows | ||
1967 | Edipo re | Oedipus Rex | Oedipus Rex by Sophocles. | Acted in the film as High Priest |
1968 | Teorema | Theorem | Pasolini's novel Teorema was also published in 1968. | |
1969 | Porcile | Pigsty | ||
1969 | Medea | Medea | Medea by Euripides. | |
1971 | Il Decameron | The Decameron | The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio. | Won the Silver Bear at the 21st Berlin International Film Festival. Acted in the film as Allievo di Giotto. |
1972 | I racconti di Canterbury | The Canterbury Tales | The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. | Won the Golden Bear at the 22nd Berlin International Film Festival. Acted in the film as Geoffrey Chaucer. |
1974 | Il fiore delle Mille e una Notte | A Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights) | One Thousand and One Nights | Screenplay written in collaboration with Dacia Maraini.
Won the Grand Prix Spécial Prize at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival. |
1975 | Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma | Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom | Les 120 journées de Sodome ou l'école du libertinage by the Marquis de Sade. | Screenplay written in collaboration with Citti with extended quotes from Roland Barthes' Sade, Fourier, Loyola and Pierre Klossowski's Sade mon prochain. |
Episodes in omnibus films
- La ricotta in RoGoPaG (1963)
- First segment of La rabbia (1963)
- "La Terra vista dalla Luna" in The Witches (1967)
- "Che cosa sono le nuvole?" in Caprice Italian Style (1968)
- "La sequenza del fiore di carta" in Love and Anger (1969)
Documentaries
- Love Meetings (1964)
- Sopralluoghi in Palestina per Il Vangelo secondo Matteo (1965)
- Appunti per un film sull'India (1968)
- Appunti per un romanzo dell'immondizia (1970)
- Appunti per un'Orestiade Africana (1970)
- Le mura di Sana'a (1971)
- 12 Dicembre 1972 (1972)
- Pasolini e la forma della città (1974)
Personal life
A small scandal broke out during a local festival in Ramuscello in September 1949. Someone informed Cordovado, the local sergeant of the Carabinieri, of sexual conduct (masturbation) by Pasolini with three youngsters aged sixteen and younger after dancing and drinking. Cordovado summoned the boys' parents, who refused to file charges despite Cordovado's urging. Cordovado nevertheless drew up a report, and the informer elaborated publicly on his accusations, sparking a public uproar. A judge in San Vito al Tagliamento charged Pasolini with "corruption of minors and obscene acts in public places". He and the 16-year-old were both indicted.
The next month, when questioned, Pasolini would not deny the facts, but talked of a "literary and erotic drive" and cited André Gide, the 1947 Nobel Prize for Literature laureate. Cordovado informed his superiors and the regional press stepped in. According to Pasolini, the Christian Democrats instigated the entire affair to smear his name ("the Christian Democrats pulled the strings"). He was fired from his job in Valvasone and was expelled from the PCI by the party's Udine section, which he considered a betrayal. He addressed a critical letter to the head of the section, his friend Ferdinando Mautino, and claimed he was being subject to a "tacticism" of the PCI. In the party, the expulsion was opposed by Teresa Degan, Pasolini's colleague in education. He also wrote her a letter admitting his regret for being "such a naif, even indecently so". Pasolini's parents reacted angrily and the situation in the family also became untenable. In late 1949, he decided to move to Rome along with his mother seeking to start a new life, settling down in the outskirts of Rome.
In 1963, at the age of 41, Pasolini met "the great love of his life", 15-year-old Ninetto Davoli, whom he later cast in his 1966 film Uccellacci e uccellini (literally Bad Birds and Little Birds but translated in English as The Hawks and the Sparrows). Pasolini became the youth's mentor and friend.
However, there were some important women in Pasolini's life, with whom Pasolini shared a feeling of profound and unique friendship, in particular Laura Betti and Maria Callas. Dacia Maraini, an Italian writer, said of Callas' behaviour towards Pasolini: "She used to follow him everywhere, even to Africa. She hoped to 'convert' him to heterosexuality and to marriage." Pasolini was also sensible to the problematics related to the "new" role ascribed to women through the Italian media, stating in a 1972 interview that "women are not slot machines".
He was a supporter of his hometown football club Bologna.
Political views
Relationship with the Italian Communist Party
By October 1945, the political status of the Friuli region became a matter of contention between different political factions. On 30 October, Pasolini joined the pro-devolution association Patrie tal Friul, founded in Udine. Pasolini wanted a Friuli based on its tradition, attached to the Catholic Church in Italy, but intent on civic and social progress, as opposed to those advocates of regional autonomy who wanted to preserve their privileges based on "immobilism". He also criticized the Italian Communist Party (PCI) for its opposition to regional devolution and preference instead for State centralisation. Pasolini founded the party Movimento Popolare Friulano, but resigned upon realizing that it was being covertly manipulated by Italy's ruling Christian Democratic Party to counter local Titoists, who were attempting to annex large swaths of the Friuli region to the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
On 26 January 1947, Pasolini wrote a declaration that was published on the front page of the newspaper Libertà: "In our opinion, we think that currently only Communism is able to provide a new culture." It generated controversy, partly due to the fact he was still not a member of the PCI. Pasolini planned to extend the work of the Academiuta to the literature of other Romance languages, and met exiled Catalan poet Carles Cardó. He took part in several demonstrations after joining the PCI. In May 1949, he attended the Peace Congress in Paris. Observing the struggles of workers and peasants, and watching the clashes of protesters with Italian police, he began to conceive his first novel. During this period, while holding a position as a teacher in a secondary school, he stood out in the local Italian Communist Party section as a skilful writer, while defying the official Party platform that Stalinism was anti-Christian. Along with the Party leadership, local Christian Democrats and Catholic clergy also took notice. In the summer of 1949, Pasolini was warned by a Roman Catholic priest to renounce Marxist-Leninism or lose his teaching position. Similarly, after some posters were put up in Udine, Giambattista Caron, a Christian Democrat deputy, warned Pasolini's cousin Nico Naldini that " should abandon communist propaganda" to prevent "pernicious reactions".
Anti-fascism and 1968 protests
Pasolini generated heated public discussion with controversial analyses of public affairs. For instance, autonomist university students were carrying on a guerrilla-style uprising against the police in the streets of Rome during the disorders of 1968. For their supporters, the disorders were a civil fight of the proletariat against the system. Pasolini made comments that have been interpreted that he was with the police or that he was a man of order, and that he was an anti-anti-fascist. According to the Centro Studi Pier Paolo Pasolini, the myth of an "anti-anti-fascist" Pasolini served to propose unlikely anti-globalist alliances by neo-fascists. Anti-antifascismo was never used by Pasolini and was only added in later years as the title of the Scritti corsari collection. Pasolini used the concept to attack various institutional subjects, such as Christian Democracy, the Italian president Giuseppe Saragat, RAI, and the Health Commission of the Chamber of Deputies, which were all guilty of ignoring some requests from Marco Pannella, who had been on hunger strike for over two months. He excluded the PCI from those parties of the constitutional arc that, as declared by Pasolini in June 1975, tried to "rebuild an anti-fascist virginity ... but, at the same time, maintaining the impunity of the fascist gangs that they, if they wanted, would liquidate in a day".
The main source regarding Pasolini's views of the student movement is his poem "Il PCI ai giovani" ('The PCI to Young People'), written after the Battle of Valle Giulia. Addressing the students, he tells them that, unlike the international news media which has been reporting on them, he will not flatter them. He points out that they are the children of the bourgeoisie (Avete facce di figli di papà / Vi odio come odio i vostri papà – 'You have the faces of daddy's boys / I hate you like I hate your dads'), before stating Quando ieri a Valle Giulia avete fatto a botte coi poliziotti / io simpatizzavo coi poliziotti ('When you and the policemen were throwing punches yesterday at Valle Giulia / I was sympathising with the policemen'). He explained that this sympathy was because the policemen were figli di poveri ('children of the poor'). The poem highlights the aspect of generational struggle within the bourgeoisie represented by the student movement: Stampa e Corriere della Sera, News- week e Monde / vi leccano il culo. Siete i loro figli / la loro speranza, il loro futuro... Se mai / si tratta di una lotta intestina ('Stampa and Corriere della Sera, Newsweek and Le Monde / they kiss your arse. You are their children / their hope, their future... If anything / it's in-fighting').
The 1968 revolt was seen by Pasolini as an internal, benign reform of the establishment in Italy, since the protesters were part of the petite bourgeoisie. The poem also implied a class hypocrisy on the part of the establishment towards the protesters, asking whether young workers would be treated similarly if they behaved in the same way: Occupate le università / ma dite che la stessa idea venga / a dei giovani operai / E allora: Corriere della Sera e Stampa, Newsweek e Monde / avranno tanta sollecitudine / nel cercar di comprendere i loro problemi? / La polizia si limiterà a prendere un po' di botte / dentro una fabbrica occupata? / Ma, soprattutto, come potrebbe concedersi / un giovane operaio di occupare una fabbrica / senza morire di fame dopo tre giorni? ('Occupy the universities / but say that the same idea comes / to young workers / So: Corriere della Sera and Stampa, Newsweek and Le Monde / will have so much care / in trying to understand their problems? / Will the police just get a bit of a fight / inside an occupied factory? / But above all, how could / a young worker be allowed to occupy a factory / without dying of hunger after three days?'
Pasolini suggested that the police were the true proletariat, sent to fight for a poor salary and for reasons which they could not understand, against pampered boys of their same age, because they had not had the fortune of being able to study, referring to poliziotti figli di proletari meridionali picchiati da figli di papà in vena di bravate ('policemen, sons of proletarian southerners, beaten up by arrogant daddy's boys'). He found that the policemen were but the outer layer of the real power, e.g. the judiciary. Pasolini was not alien to courts and trials. During all his life, Pasolini was frequently entangled in up to 33 lawsuits filed against him, variously charged with "public disgrace", "foul language", "obscenity", "pornography", "contempt of religion", and "contempt of the state", for which he was always eventually acquitted.
The conventional interpretation of Pasolini's position has been challenged. In an article published in 2015, Wu Ming argued that Pasolini's statements need to be understood in the context of Pasolini's self-confessed hatred of the bourgeoisie which had persecuted him for so long, as "Il PCI ai giovani" states that "We (i.e. Pasolini and the students) are obviously in agreement against the police institution", and that the poem portrays policemen as dehumanised by their work. Although the battles between students and the police were fights between the rich and the poor, Pasolini concedes that the students were "on the side of reason" whilst the police were "in the wrong". Wu Ming suggested that Pasolini intended to express scepticism regarding the idea of students being a revolutionary force, contending that only the working class could make a revolution and that revolutionary students should join the PCI. Furthermore, he cites a column by Pasolini which was published in the magazine Tempo later that year, which described the student movement, along with the wartime resistance, as "the Italian people's only two democratic-revolutionary experiences". That year, he also wrote in support of the PCI's proposals for disarming the police, arguing that this would create a break in the psychology of policemen. He said: "It would lead to the sudden collapse of that 'false idea of himself' ascribed to him by Power, which has programmed him like a robot." Pasolini's polemics were aimed at goading protesters into re-thinking their revolt, and did not stop him from contributing to the autonomist Lotta Continua movement, who he described as "extremists, yes, maybe fanatic and insolently boorish from a cultural point of view, but they push their luck and that is precisely why I think they deserve to be supported. We must want too much to obtain a little."
Rising society of consumption
Pasolini was particularly concerned about the class of the subproletariat, which he portrayed in Accattone, and to which he felt both humanly and artistically drawn. He observed that the type of purity which he perceived in the pre-industrial popular culture was rapidly vanishing, a process that he named la scomparsa delle lucciole ('the disappearance of the fireflies'). The joie de vivre of boys was being rapidly replaced with more bourgeois ambitions such as a house and a family. He was critical of those leftists who held a "traditional and never admitted hatred against lumpenproletariats and poor populations". In 1958, he called on the PCI to become "'the party of the poor people': the party, we may say, of the lumpenproletarians".
Pasolini's stance finds its roots in the belief that a Copernican change was taking place in Italian society and the world. Linked to that very idea, he was also an ardent critic of consumismo, i.e. consumerism, which he felt had rapidly destroyed Italian society from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s. He described the coprophagia scenes in Salò as a comment on the processed food industry. As he saw it, the society of consumerism ("neocapitalism") and the "new fascism" had thus expanded an alienation / homogenization and centralization that the former clerical fascism had not managed to achieve, so bringing about an anthropological change. That change is related to the loss of humanism and the expansion of productivity as central to the human condition, which he despised. He found that 'new culture' was degrading and vulgar. In one interview, he said: "I hate with particular vehemency the current power, the power of 1975, which is a power that manipulates bodies in a horrible way; a manipulation that has nothing to envy to that performed by Himmler or Hitler." According to Pasolini scholar Simona Bondavalli, Pasolini's definition of neo-capitalism as a "new fascism" enforced uniform conformity without resorting to coercive means. As Pasolini put it, "No Fascist centralism succeeded in doing what the centralism of consumer culture did." Philosopher Davide Tarizzo summarized Pasolini's position:
"In his view, both old and new fascisms undermine the fundamentals of modern democracy. Yet new fascism does not do this by absolutizing popular sovereignty at the expense of individual rights. New fascism celebrates our freedoms and absolutizes human rights to the detriment of our sense of belonging to a social-political community. Therefore, old and new fascisms strive to accomplish democracy—which is the restless ambition of fascism—via opposite routes. In the former case, the result is the birth of political subjects such as the master race, supported by revelatory political grammar. In the latter case, the result is the birth of an altogether different subject, which is no longer a political actor, properly speaking, but a passive, anonymous entity: the human population."
Strong criticism of Christian Democracy
Pasolini saw some continuity between the Fascist era and the post-war political system which was led by the Christian Democrats, describing the latter as "clerico-fascism" due to its use of the state as a repressive instrument and its manipulation of power: he saw the conditions among the Roman sub proletariat in the borgate as an example of this, being marginalised and segregated socially and geographically as they were under Fascism, and in conflict with a criminal police force. He also blamed the Christian Democrats for assimilating the values of consumer capitalism, contributing to what he saw as the erosion of human values.
The 1975 Italian regional elections saw the rise of the leftist parties, and dwelling on his blunt, ever more political approach and prophetic style during this period, he declared in Corriere della Sera that the time had come to put the most prominent Christian Democrat figures on trial, where they would need to be shown walking in handcuffs and led by the Carabinieri; he felt that this was the only way they could be removed from power. Pasolini charged the Christian Democratic leadership with being "riddled with Mafia influence", covering up a number of bombings by neo-fascists, collaborating with the CIA, and working with the CIA and the Italian Armed Forces to prevent the rise of the left.
Television linked to cultural alienation
Pasolini was angered by economic globalization and cultural domination of the north of Italy (around Milan) over other regions, especially the south. He felt this was accomplished through the power of television. A debate TV programme recorded in 1971, where he denounced censorship, was not actually aired until the day following his murder in November 1975. In a PCI reform plan that he drew up in September and October 1975, among the desirable measures to be implemented, he cited the abolition of television.
Others
Pasolini opposed the gradual disappearance of Italy's minority languages by writing some of his poetry in Friulan, the regional language of his childhood. His opposition to the liberalization of abortion law made him unpopular on the left.
After 1968, Pasolini engaged with the left-libertarian, anti-clerical, and liberal Radical Party (Partito Radicale). He involved himself in polemics with party leader Marco Pannella, supported the Party's initiative calling for eight referendums on various liberalising reforms, and had accepted an invitation to speak at the Party's congress before he was killed. Despite supporting the holding of a referendum on the decriminalisation of abortion, he was opposed to actually decriminalising it, and he also criticised the Party's understanding of democratic activism as being a matter of equalising access to capitalist markets for the working class and other subaltern groups. In an interview he gave shortly before his death, Pasolini stated he frequently disagreed with the Party. He continued to give qualified support to the PCI. in June 1975, he said that he would still vote for the PCI because he felt it was "an island where critical consciousness is always desperately defended: and where human behaviour has been still able to preserve the old dignity", and in his final months he became close to the Rome section of the Italian Communist Youth Federation. A Federation activist, Vincenzo Cerami, delivered the speech he was due to give at the Radical Party congress: in it, Pasolini confirmed his Marxism and his support for the PCI.
Outside of Italy, Pasolini took a particular interest in the developing world, seeing parallels between life among the Italian underclass and in the third world, going so far as to declare that Bandung was the capital of three-quarters of the world and half of Italy. He was also positive about the New Left in the United States, predicting that it would "lead to an original form of non-Marxist Socialism" and writing that the movement reminded him of the Italian Resistance. Pasolini saw these two areas of struggle as inter-linked: after visiting Harlem he stated that "the core of the struggle for the Third World revolution is really America".
Murder and death
Pasolini was murdered on 2 November 1975 at a beach in Ostia. Almost unrecognizable, Pasolini was savagely beaten and also run over several times with his own car. Multiple bones were broken and his testicles were crushed by what appeared to have been a metal bar. An autopsy revealed that his body had been partially burned with gasoline after his death. The crime was long viewed as a Mafia-style revenge killing, one that was extremely unlikely to have been carried out by only one person. Pasolini was buried in Casarsa.
Giuseppe "Pino" Pelosi (1958–2017), then 17 years old, was caught driving Pasolini's car and confessed to the murder. He was convicted and sentenced to 9 years in prison in 1976, initially with "unknown others", but this phrase was later removed from the verdict. Twenty-nine years later, on 7 May 2005, Pelosi retracted his confession, which he said had been made under the threat of violence to his family. He claimed that three people "with a southern accent" had committed the murder, while further insulting Pasolini as a "dirty communist".
Other evidence uncovered in 2005 suggested that Pasolini had been murdered by an extortionist. Testimony by his friend Sergio Citti indicated that some of the rolls of film from Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom had been stolen, and that Pasolini planned to meet with and negotiate its return from the thieves on 2 November 1975 following a visit to Stockholm, Sweden. Citti's investigation uncovered additional evidence, including a bloody wooden stick and an eyewitness who said he saw a group of men pull Pasolini from the car. The Rome police reopened the murder as a cold case after Pelosi's retraction, but the investigative magistrates responsible for the investigation found that the new elements were insufficient to justify a continued inquiry. As of 2023, a plea to reopen the case was filed based on DNA analysis and links the murder to the Banda della Magliana, a criminal organisation with close ties to far-right terrorism, as the probable culprits.
Legacy
As a director, Pasolini created a picaresque neorealism, showing a sad reality. Many people did not want to see such portrayals in artistic work for public distribution. Mamma Roma (1962), featuring Anna Magnani and telling the story of a prostitute and her son, was an affront to the public ideals of the morality of those times. His works, with their unequalled poetry applied to cruel realities, showed that such realities were less distant from most daily lives, and contributed to changes in the Italian psyche.
Pasolini's work often engendered disapproval perhaps primarily because of his frequent focus on sexual behaviour, and the contrast between what he presented and what was publicly sanctioned. While Pasolini's poetry often dealt with his gay love interests, this was not the only, or even main, theme. His interest in and use of Italian dialects should also be noted. Much of the poetry was about his highly revered mother. He depicted certain corners of the contemporary reality as few other poets could do. His poetry, which took some time before it was translated, was not as well known outside Italy as were his films. A collection in English was published in 1996.
Pasolini also developed a philosophy of language mainly related to his studies on cinema. This theoretical and critical activity was another hotly debated topic. His collected articles and responses are still available today.
These studies can be considered the foundation of his artistic point of view: he believed that the language—such as English, Italian, dialect or other—is a rigid system in which human thought is trapped. He also thought that the cinema is the "written" language of reality which, like any other written language, enables man to see things from the point of view of truth.
His films won awards at the Berlin International Film Festival, Cannes Film Festival, Venice Film Festival, Italian National Syndicate for Film Journalists, Jussi Awards, Kinema Junpo Awards, International Catholic Film Office and New York Film Critics Circle. The Gospel According to St. Matthew was nominated for the United Nations Award of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) in 1968.
Filmography
This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (November 2024) |
Year | Title | Writer | Director | Soundtrack | Role | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1955 | The River Girl | Yes | No | No | — | |
1957 | Nights of Cabiria | Yes | No | No | — | |
1958 | Young Husbands | Yes | No | No | — | |
1959 | Bad Girls Don't Cry | Yes | No | No | — | |
1960 | Long Night in 1943 | Yes | No | No | — | |
The Hunchback of Rome | No | No | No | Monco | ||
La Dolce Vita | Yes | No | No | — | ||
Il bell'Antonio | Yes | No | No | — | ||
From a Roman Balcony | Yes | No | No | — | ||
1961 | Accattone | Yes | Yes | No | — | |
Girl in the Window | Yes | No | No | — | ||
1962 | Mamma Roma | Yes | Yes | No | — | |
1963 | Ro.Go.Pa.G. | Yes | Yes | No | — | Segment: "La ricotta" |
La rabbia | Yes | Yes | No | — | Documentary | |
1964 | The Gospel According to St. Matthew | Yes | Yes | No | — | |
1965 | Love Meetings | Yes | Yes | No | The Interviewer | Documentary |
Location Hunting in Palestine | Yes | Yes | No | Himself | Documentary | |
1966 | The Hawks and the Sparrows | Yes | Yes | Yes | — | |
1967 | Requiescant | Yes | No | No | Don Juan | |
The Witches | Yes | Yes | No | — | Segment: "La Terra vista dalla Luna" | |
Oedipus Rex | Yes | Yes | No | High Priest | ||
1968 | Teorema | Yes | Yes | No | — | |
Appunti per un film sull'India | Yes | Yes | No | Himself | Documentary | |
Caprice Italian Style | Yes | Yes | Yes | — | Segment: "Cosa sono le nuvole?" | |
1969 | Love and Anger | Yes | Yes | No | — | Segment: "La sequenza del fiore di carta" |
Pigsty | Yes | Yes | No | — | ||
Medea | Yes | Yes | No | — | ||
1970 | Ostia | Yes | No | No | — | |
Notes Towards an African Orestes | Yes | Yes | No | Narrator (voice) | Documentary | |
1971 | The Decameron | Yes | Yes | No | Giotto's Pupil | First in the Trilogy of Life. |
1972 | The Canterbury Tales | Yes | Yes | Yes | Chaucer | Second in the Trilogy of Life. |
1973 | Bawdy Tales | Yes | No | No | — | |
1974 | Arabian Nights | Yes | Yes | No | — | Third in the Trilogy of Life. |
1975 | Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom | Yes | Yes | No | — | Released three weeks after his murder. |
In popular culture
Many documentaries and films have been released since the time of his murder, some of which include:
- Das Mitleid ist gestorben, a documentary directed by Ebbo Demant and released in 1978.
- In 1986, the avant-garde band Coil released their album Horse Rotorvator, which includes the track "Ostia (The Death of Pasolini)" in tribute to the late filmmaker.
- Who Killed Pasolini?, directed by Marco Tullio Giordana in 1995. The film reconstructs the trial of Pino Pelosi, accused of Pasolini's murder.
- Re: Pasolini, made by Stefano Battaglia in 2005, was dedicated to Pasolini.
- Pasolini, directed by Abel Ferrara. A 2014 biopic directed about Pasolini, with Willem Dafoe in the lead role. It was selected to compete for the Golden Lion at the 71st Venice International Film Festival.
- PPPasolini, directed by Malga Kubiak, a drama movie based on the story of Pier Paolo Pasolini's life and death, released in 2015. The movie was screened at the seventh edition of the LGBT Film Festival in Warsaw, and received a People's Choice Award at the festival.
- La macchinazione, directed by his former collaborator David Grieco, a 2016 biopic on the last hours of Pasolini's life starring Massimo Ranieri as Pasolini.
See also
Notes
- The translated English title is used infrequently.
References
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- ^ Siciliano, Enzo. 2014, 111–112
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{{cite web}}
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{{cite web}}
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Further reading
- Aichele, George. "Translation as De-canonization: Matthew's Gospel According to Pasolini – filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini – Critical Essay". Cross Currents (2002).
- Chiesa, Lorenzo. Pasolini and the Ugliness of Bodies. In: Polezzi, Loredana and Ross, Charlotte, eds. In Corpore: Bodies in Post-Unification Italy. Farleigh Dickinson University Press, Madison, pp. 208–227. ISBN 978-0-8386-4164-4.
- Distefano, John. "Picturing Pasolini", Art Journal (1997).
- Eberstadt, Fernanda (2024). Bite Your Friends: Stories of the Body Militant. Europa Editions. pp. 195–242. ISBN 979-8-88966-006-4.
- Eloit, Audrene. "Oedipus Rex by Pier Paolo Pasolini The Palimpsest: Rewriting and the Creation of Pasolini's Cinematic Language". Literature Film Quarterly (2004).
- Fabbro, Elena (ed.). Il mito greco nell'opera di Pasolini. Atti del Convegno Udine-Casarsa della Delizia, 24–26 ottobre 2002. Udine: Forum (2004). ISBN 88-8420-230-2.
- Forni, Kathleen. "A "Cinema of Poetry": What Pasolini Did to Chancer's Canterbury Tales". Literature Film Quarterly (2002).
- Frisch, Anette. "Francesco Vezzolini: Pasolini Reloaded". Interview, Rutgers University Alexander Library, New Brunswick, NJ.
- Ginzburg, Carlo, Safran, Yehuda, Sherer Daniel. "An Interview with Carlo Ginzburg, by Yehuda Safran and Daniel Sherer". Potlatch 5 (2022), special issue on Carlo Ginzburg. Discussion of Ginzburg's meeting with Pasolini and Elsa Morante and Pasolini's interest in Ginzburg's work as a historian of Friuli.
- Green, Martin. "The Dialectic Adaptation".
- Greene, Naomi. Pier Paolo Pasolini: Cinema as Heresy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1990.
- Hamza, Agon. Althusser and Pasolini - Philosophy, Marxism and Film. Palgrave, NY (2016). ISBN 978-1-137-56651-5.
- Meyer-Krahmer, Benjamin. "Transmediality and Pastiche as Techniques in Pasolini's Art Production", in: P.P.P. – Pier Paolo Pasolini and death, eds. Bernhart Schwenk, Michael Semff, Ostfildern 2005, pp. 109–118.
- Passannanti, Erminia, Il corpo & il potere. Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma di Pier Paolo Pasolini, Prima edizione, Troubador, Leicester, 2004; Seconda Edizione, Joker, Savona 2008.
- Passannanti, Erminia, Il Cristo del'Eresia. Pier Paolo Pasolini. Cinema e Censura, Joker, Savona 2009.
- Passannanti, Erminia, La ricotta. Il Sacro trasgredito. Il cinema di Pier Paolo Pasolini e la censura religiosa, 2009 was also published in "Italy on Screen" (Peter Lang Ed., 2011). The book contains excerpts from the 1962 court trial.
- Pugh, Tison. "Chaucerian Fabliaux, Cinematic Fabliau: Pier Paolo Pasolini's I racconti di Canterbury", Literature Film Quarterly (2004).
- Restivo, Angelo. The Cinema of Economic Miracles: Visuality and Modernization in the Italian Art Film. London: Duke UP, 2002.
- Rohdie, Sam. The Passion of Pier Paolo Pasolini. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana UP, 1995.
- Rumble, Patrick A. Allegories of contamination: Pier Paolo Pasolini's Trilogy of life. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996.
- Schwartz, Barth D. Pasolini Requiem. 1st ed. New York: Pantheon Books, 1992.
- Siciliano, Enzo. Pasolini: A Biography. Trans. John Shepley. New York: Random House, 1982.
- Thompson, N.S., Pier Paolo Pasolini: Poet and Prophet, in Murray, Glen (ed.), Cencrastus No. 7, Winter 1981 - 82, pp. 30 – 32.
- Tusa, Giovanbattista. "The Pasolinian Century", in: Hildebrandt, Toni and Tusa, Giovanbattista (eds.), PPPP. Pier Paolo Pasolini Philosopher. Mimesis International, 2022, pp. 317–323.
- Viano, Maurizio. A Certain Realism: Making Use of Pasolini's Film Theory and Practice. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.
- Willimon, William H. "Faithful to the script", Christian Century (2004).
External links
- Pier Paolo Pasolini at IMDb
- Interview with Jonas Mekas in Bomb Magazine Archived 18 June 2015 at the Wayback Machine
- Pasolini on Filmgalerie451 Archived 16 April 2013 at the Wayback Machine
- Piers Paolo Pasolini, Italian Website with Extensive Commentary
- "Pier Paolo Pasolini", Senses of Cinema
- BBC News Report on the Reopening of the Murder Case
- Guy Flatley: "The Atheist Who Was Obsessed with God" Archived 3 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine, MovieCrazed
- Doug Ireland, "Restoring Pasolini", ZMag
- Pasolini's Own Notes on Salò from 1974
- Pier Paolo Pasolini Poems – Original Italian Text.
- Video (in Italian): Pasolini on the Destructive Impact of Television on YouTube (Interrupted and Half-Censored by Enzo Biagi)
- Italian Website dedicated to Pasolini
- Pasolini's Second to Last Interview, Long Believed to Have Been Lost
- "Pasolini's Legacy: A Sprawl of Brutality", Dennis Lim, The New York Times, 26 December 2012
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