I don’t know about a “Trilogy of Death” but Pasolini wanted to next make “St. Paul” —setting it in then-contemporary New York. His script for that project was published in Italian and French.
A project with a working title Porno-Teo-Kolossal, almost certainly.
I’ve seen San Paolo mentioned as the other candidate, but San Paolo had been at an advanced planning stage for years (since before the Trilogy of Life) and doesn’t seem particularly appropriate to insertion in a ‘Trilogy of Death’, although of course it might have been up for further modification.
I’m still a little bit sceptical about this ‘Trilogy’, but only because I’ve never yet seen any first-hand evidence that it was a formulated project. Do you know if there’s documented evidence that Pasolini used the term?
Not that I know of.
I think you are thinking of the fact that the TRILOGY OF LIFE got rethought of academically as a QUARTET OF DEATH with the completion of SALO adding a damning coda to the previous three films that had otherwise been read/marketed as earthy, boisterous and bawdy but now might be seen as having a pervasive oppression within them. I forget where this idea was first put forth, but it waren’t me. Gary Indiana? HERETICAL EMPIRICISM? The Sam Rhodie book? Anyone? Anyone?
has Pasolini’s St Paul script ever been published in English and if not where can one get a copy of this?
and what was San Paolo supposed to be about?
@ Rudy. San Paolo = St Paul in Italian
…maybe it actually came up in a Pasolini interview around the time of SALO (Film Comment?) as I seem to remember the idea segueing into Pasolini’s statements that for the children in SALO to become corrupted, they had to first have within them the potential to be corruptible, and that inherent exploitable flaw being linked somehow to the idea of the “quartet of death”…that the three movies in the trilogy of life also had within them the same potential to be corrupted. I think I’m summing this up correctly, but again, my memory is foggy about where I have heard the phrase.
Pasolini wrote an article, which in substance said what he’d already said in interviews, renouncing the Trilogy of Life in the name of subsequent social developments and deep disillusion: and yes, that the corrupted present meant that the past was also corrupted…
Apparently this site wants to make itself ultralingual (hence the new name) so in the name of appealing to all languages and being in a tearing hurry….
Tout va bien: non ci sono nel paese masse di giovani criminaloidi, o nevrotici, o conformisti fino alla follia e alla più totale intolleranza, ….. Tutti si sono adattati o attraverso il non voler accorgersi di niente o attraverso la più inerte sdrammatizzazione.
Ma devo ammettere che anche l’essersi accorti o l’aver drammatizzato non preserva affatto dall’adattamento o dall’accettazione. Dunque io mi sto adattando alla degradazione e sto accettando l’inaccettabile. Manovro per risistemare la mia vita. Sto dimenticando com’erano prima le cose. Le amate facce di ieri cominciano a ingiallire. Mi è davanti – pian piano senza più alternative – il presente. Riadatto il mio impegno ad una maggiore leggibilità (Salò)-————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
Okay, well all the misconceptions aside, and with St. Paul aside as well, if Pasolini had intended to make a Trilogy of Death starting with Salo, what do you think he should have adapted for the subsequent two parts?
Nope.
Let me rephrase that: what do you think would have made good adaptations for him to make?
Charles Deckert
Before Pasolini was murdered, he was said to follow Salo with two more films creating a complimentary threesome to his Trilogy of Life called obviously the Trilogy of Death. Obviously these did not get made, and in searching for more information on his idea I cannot seem to find anything regarding what those two parts were to be. Perhaps they weren’t yet realized, or maybe they just went forever unsaid. What do you think would have made up the two following installments in the Trilogy of Death?