Fifty years after his dying, what stays of Pasolini as a filmmaker? | EUROtoday
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EIs it as a result of we’re commemorating the fifty years of his dying? Lately, Pasolini is all over the place, notably on the stage of the Odéon (the place an adaptation of the unfinished assortment is being carried out Oil), in the concept that “civilization begins when we do things for others” deployed by Gianfranco Rosi in his documentary Pompei sotto le nuvole (in theaters), and even in The Silver Book (untranslated), the brand new novel by British writer Olivia Laing, which recounts the filming of her newest movie, Salò or the 120 days of Sodom (1975).
A means of defying dying for the person whose tortured physique was found on November 2, 1975, on a seashore in Ostia, close to Rome. If the homicide stays unsolved, the work may be very a lot alive as Pasolini was “the most important Italian writer of the 20the century “. In any case, this is what Roberto Carnero asserts in a remarkable essay, Pasolini – Dying for ideas, recently published by Cherche midi. Beyond the biographical journey that it brilliantly retraces, this sensitive book is also an opportunity to question what remains of the filmmaker Pasolini.
At the time of their release, the films made headlines for their provocative side, a scandal invariably accompanying each screening. This has been true since 1961, when Pasolini made his first feature film, Accattoneperformed by non-professional actors in the tradition of neorealism. The film follows the inevitably tragic destiny of a pimp from the Roman outskirts who vainly aspires to redemption. The Minister of Tourism and Arts and Entertainment (this was the title of the Italian Minister of Culture at the time) then intervened in person to accelerate a decree aimed at raising the age limit at the cinema from 16 to 18 years old. This is how “Pasolini’s first film was also the first film banned for minors in Italian history,” writes Roberto Carnero.
Disguised autobiographies
The universe that Pasolini describes in Accattone is that of a miserable sub-proletariat whose existence is essentially ignored by politicians in the midst of the Italian “economic miracle”. This is the very subject of his first two novels (The Ragazzi1958, and A violent life1961). Because, underlines Roberto Carnero, literature and cinema are true “communicating vessels” for Pasolini, sometimes with an “inextricable combination” as in the case of Theorem (1969), both film and novel.
His cinema borrows from the great texts of universal literature (from Decameron or to Arabian Nights), and yet it is still deeply autobiographical. Thus we learn that his Oedipus the King (1967) is in his eyes “his most autobiographical film”: “The child in the prologue is me, his father is my father, an infantry officer, and the mother, a teacher, is my mother. I tell my life, obviously mythologized, made epic by the legend of Oedipus,” Pasolini wrote at the time. Medea (1969) is another piece of the puzzle, a way of confronting a fundamental character in his life – his mother – to whom he devotes a striking poem from the collection Poetry in the shape of a rose (1964) where we read: “Your love is my enslavement. »
In this sense, the most emblematic film of Pasolini’s art is undoubtedly Mamma Roma (1962), which offers a magnificent role to Anna Magnani and transforms the prostitute mother into a religious icon, with allusions to Leonardo da Vinci and Andrea Mantegna, and quotes from Dante. In his Gospel according to Saint Matthew (1964), another masterpiece, the filmmaker will once again put his great pictorial culture to good use, drawing inspiration in particular from Caravaggio.
Eros and politics
What makes Pasolini’s cinema deeply scandalous is the link he establishes between political vision and the depiction of sexuality. Thus, to tell “the revolt of the sons against the fathers”, Pigsty (1968) and Theorem (1969) show scandalous behavior (cannibalism and bestiality in the first film, unfettered sexual freedom in the second), and arouse the indignation of the authorities and Catholic bodies.
When, in THE Decameron (1971), appears the first male nude in the history of Italian cinema, several public prosecutors order the seizure of the film. The left rebels just as much as the conservative part of society, judging these works as disengaged from any political statement… Pasolini then pleads for a right to “democratization of the best of expression and for sexual liberation”, before regretting a generalization of an erotic-sulphurous cinema (in the style Caligula) which he nevertheless largely inspired.
What Roberto Carnero analyzes is that after exalting eros as a way of escaping ambient consumerism, Pasolini appears pessimistic and even apocalyptic. As evidenced by his latest film, the unbearable Salò or the 120 days of Sodom which links Sade and Dante and where sex is, in the words of the filmmaker himself, “the metaphor of power […] it is the (perhaps dreamlike) representation of what Marx calls the commodification of man: the reduction of the body to a thing (through exploitation).”
At Pasolini’s funeral, Alberto Moravia, in his eulogy, assures that the author will remain above all as a poet. This is undoubtedly true, but if we integrate the films into this poetic work. By treating Pasolini’s literary, cinematic and intellectual legacy as a whole, Roberto Carnero’s essay invites us to revisit these often arduous, demanding, uncomfortable but always fascinating films.
To Discover
Kangaroo of the day
Answer
Pasolini – Dying for IdeasRoberto Carnero, translated from Italian by Sabine Mille and Stefano Palombari, Le Cherche midi, 456 pages, 21 euros.
Around ten movies by Pier Paolo Pasolini can be found on DVD from Carlotta Films.
https://www.lepoint.fr/culture/cinquante-ans-apres-sa-mort-que-reste-t-il-de-pasolini-cineaste-14-12-2025-2605351_3.php