Pier Paolo fucking Pasolini: Search (I don't want to hear your destroy choices cause they're of no fucking interest to me)

I resaw the Ferrara film tonight, and somehow never knew Ninetto Davoli became PPP's bf at age 15 til AF brought it up in the Q&A.

enjoyed Mamma Roma, I had never watched it before. It was dedicated to Rossellini and was made with Rome, Open City in mind, using the same actress, Anna Magnani, who is fantastic. It was interesting to read that Pasolini’s actors were mostly nonprofessionals who only starred in his films, and that he chose them because their acting did not seem “real” (eg, Ettore’s sleepwalking gait). I recognized quite a few of them in this from Accattone (the only other film of his I have seen so far)

never watched a film with Ninetto Davoli in it before. He is really charming in The Hawks and the Sparrows, as is Totò. I like that Pasolini as an atheist was looking for beauty in representations of faith

Davoli is in the Ferrara film... and a young actor plays him in it

I will look for it

wow Oedipus Rex is very satisfying. Franco Citti is such a hot-head!

I liked the abrupt split in eras in which the story took place, and that the time rupture did not coincide with the film’s division into its first and second parts

amateurist’s comment above that “it was a major inspiration for the taiwanese new wave directors” is interesting

also like that the thread starter has no user name

Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom is the first Pasolini film that has let me down

looking forward to seeing Theorem

haven't found a way yet to watch The Gospel According to Saint Matthew

*Teorema

Let's wait for Morbs to return from his Teorema screening earlier today.

It has its moments, even a few after Stamp departs, and I like how he makes Milan look like shit.

It's not a very queer movie; falling in love with Stamp is just a metaphor for having your bourgeois self wrecked. Not one of his best.

Had to turn off the gospel of st matthew, couldn't get past the seemingly endless series of pronouncements in close up. decameron was ok but I don't think I get pasolini at all right now

Rewatched Accatone, his first and among the best and most unsparing. Franco Citti had a very beautiful/ugly thing goin' on. (He's in many of the later films and shows up in Sicily in The Godfather.) The recurring scenes of the ne'er-do-wells' main hangout also anticipates the sidewalk social club/cafe in The Sopranos.

Franco Citti's crooked teeth are distracting

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lqsLTskEBA

liked Decameron for screwing nuns and N Davoli in barrel of shit

I saw from Letterboxd that you also saw The Canterbury Tales. Did you get to Arabian Nights? (I'm guessing you're watching them now for the same reason I did--they were leaving the Criterion Channel at the end of May.)

I think I like The Decameron and Arabian Nights about equally; they're both very warm, sexy, funny films. The Canterbury Tales is a bit more sour, a product, perhaps, of the source material (haven't read since undergrad), but at the very least, it leads to one of the most audacious and hilarious ending scenes in film history.

I saw Arabian Nights first a few years back at MoMA, don't remember it well

on The Decameron

https://www.artforum.com/film/andreas-petrossiants-on-pasolini-s-the-decameron-83588

Good piece. Been a decade since I saw The Decameron but there is work to be done on the way Pasolini engages with text and also his own readings of the change in the Italian working class at the time.

wrote an essay for @VersoBooks about pasolini's easter films (la ricotta, location hunting in palestine, il vangelo secondo matteo): his approach to landscape, technique of radical allegory, the influence of erich auerbach (thanks to @caitdoherty) https://t.co/lG9TU21XQm

— roland barfs (@rolandbarfs) April 2, 2021

With a thread title like this, I had to think if he had any films I would "destroy". La Rabbia is pretty irrelevant in 2021, and I didn't really get the point of Hawks and Sparrows. Everything else is interesting to great.

thread title otm

That's an interesting article by Andrew Key; I didn't realize Pasolini had written a screenplay about St. Paul.
One of my favourite books about the work of a single director is A Certain Realism by Maurizio Viano, he manages to touch on all of Pasolini's works, exploring common themes without rehashing the same points over and over.
Noodle Vague, are we really expected to love every film Pasolini made?

Is there a good/legal way to watch The Gospel according to Saint Matthew?

https://eurekavideo.co.uk/movie/the-gospel-according-to-matthew-il-vangelo-secondo-matteo/

However you see it, don't watch the colourized, cut and English-dubbed version from Legend Films!

However you see it, don't watch the colourized, cut and English-dubbed version from Legend Films!

https://eurekavideo.co.uk/movie/the-gospel-according-to-matthew-il-vangelo-secondo-matteo🕸/

the colourized, cut and English-dubbed version from Legend Films!

why the fuck would anybody do this??

I think it's meant for American Christians who presumably don't want to watch a long black-and-white film in Italian, whoever the main character is.

I rented a DVD of Gospel According to Matthew, was pretty old tho (Window-boxed)

Presumably whoever scripted the English-language version downplayed the Communist angle for the US audience too.

Most of the major work on The Criterion Channel. Have never watched Accatone, doing so tonight.

"Make sure to bury me over there, in the sunlight".

Presumably in celebration of his centennial.

For most of its running time Accattone plays like Rossellini or early Fellini: a seamier I Vitelloni. I don't know if the dream sequence quite works.

Watched the restored Gospel According to Matthew on CC; looks great.

It's true that Accattone isn't a formal break from the style and stories of neo-realism; what I love about it is the novelistic pacing and this thick aura of fatalism that overhangs the character, but is subtle enough that you can't put your finger on how it's created. I thought I might have voted for this in the all-time film poll, but instead I chose Edipo Re.

I'm still waiting for Noodle Vague to answer my question from eleven months ago.

Well that'll do ya

https://www.criterion.com/boxsets/6588-pasolini-101

I've still only ever see the Trilogy of Life.

just came here to post that. damn.

Trilogy of Life.

i have that blu-ray set

saw The Gospel According to Matthew recently and it seems like his greatest film. Mamma Roma, Accattone, The Hawks and the Sparrows, and Teorema are also really good

I thought Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom was a tedious and lifeless film

haven't seem the Trilogy of Life, those films are generally not available to rent

The documentary about Italian sex life sucks, I must say. It's done after 10 minutes.

Maurizio Viano says the only value the film has is as a documentary of the embarrassment and shame of the participants, who spend most of the time evading Pasolini's questions.

NYRB are releasing Teorema on paperback (didn't know it was a novel). I don't particularly care for him as a novelist but I am interested to see how these things translate.

My second favourite of his movies after St Matthew, I'm also interested in reading it