The Hawks and the Sparrows, The Decameron, The Canterbury Tales, Arabian Nights.
Then the more difficult features: Teorema, Oedipus Rex, Porcile, Accatone, Mamma Roma, Medea.
I don’t think he’s undervalued…if you’re a fan, then he’s valued. Do the “masses” go around talking about him the way they do Hitchcock, Scorsese, or even Truffaut? No…bu Pasolini wasn’t meant for the masses…imo.
@Allan
Take no notice of Blue K, Custodian of His Lavatory — the man takes pictures of himself in his bathroom, for God’s sake. (Creepy.)
To my mind, the only justification for Pasolini having lived was to inspire Scott Walker to write Farmer in the City. I could readily do without the man’s films.
Pasolini loved the masses — but they didn’t love him back.
I love Pasolini, imo he’s better than Visconti, Bertolucci, etc…
He’s just not better than Antonioni and Fellini.
But he’s an excelent director, and I don’t think he’s complex.
I like The Gospel According to St. Matthew; Teorema; Saló or the 120 Days of Sodom.
Pasolini is undervalued and it’s all because of Salo. In today’s society, Salo (arguably his most famous film) is often mentioned when people are talking about “disturbing” or “hard-to-watch” cinema. What other films are on these lists: films like Cannibal Holocaust, Men Behind the Sun, August Underground and works by the likes of Fulci and Franco. In other words, films that are better known for their gore, animal cruelty and extreme (and often unnecessary) violence than for what they have to say. Well, after people see these films and see them as nothing more than thrill-films, they will be much less likely to want to watch the director’s lesser-known films, even if those films are nothing like their one disturbing well-known film.
^^I agree Salo is a big reason when he could be undervalued, but i also feel his output was totally uneven. He walked that fine line between artistic and amateur, and sometimes he jumped right over it and produced movies that i would consider trash, like Medea. But at the same time, i love Gospel and a few others.
Overall i prefer his neo-realist films. before he developed the ‘pasolini style’
Well, for me undervalued would be someone whose work has not reached its potential audience, I don’t know if that can be applied to Pasolini but indeed he does not get the attention that other Italian filmmakers get (who are not an easy swallow themselves) such as Antonioni, for example…
I think that one of the reasons Pasolini created a very original and unique style of filmmaking is that he was not a true cinephile in the first place (Bertolucci, who started his career as an assistant on ’’Accattone’’, says in an interview how he was witnessing how cinema is created, he himself being a cinephile, however being an assistant to a director who was not). Not that he was ignorant about cinema or filmmaking (he cites Dreyer, Chaplin and Mizoguchi as the three directors who have been most influential to him), but he did not fetishize it the way the French new wave did it and did not see it as his main and only occupation as the other great Italian filmmakers from that time. He was a poet who found out that film is the most convenient medium that can express his ideas at the time, and he is probably the filmmaker that sought inspiration for his films from the widest variety of non-cinematic sources – Greek and ancient mythology and philosophy, the Gospels, medieval and Renaissance paintings, Marxian and Freudian theories, to name a few only :)
As for my favorites – they are those whom I have seen the most times- ’’Teorema’’, ’’Medea’’, The Gospel According to Matthew’’, ’’Accattone’’, ‘’La Ricotta’’ from RoGoPaG. I think I need further viewing of ‘’Oedipus Rex’’ to appreciate it more as I have seen it only on a very crappy DVD…
I find Pasolini’s presence is often felt in modern hyper-realism (take the work of Ramin Bahrani for example) but overall he was definitely was a force that only a small minority seem to have come to an understanding of. I think he is even less appreciated for his satire, an aspect of his work that’s influence heavily left it’s mark on the recent Greek film “Dogtooth.”
First of not only is Pasolini’s films important but the films in which he served as a writer are also of parmount importance, as I have not seen them I would love to, espically from reading what they are about, the actors featured in the films and the directors that directed his screenplays or the screenplays Pasolini contributed too, all require viewing in my book. Although those are rather obscure Raro video has released some. That said my favorite Pasolini films are Accatone, I love the main actor in that in that Citti, the movie itself its brilliant, on a side note the movie has some of the most stylish muthafuckas to grace a black and white movie. My second favorite film is The Gospel According to St Mathew, anyone who watches that film will notice right away that Scorsese pulled the music from Gospel and used it in Casino much like who Tarantino does for his films, yet Q.T catches flack for it, which is beyond me because his usage of music is phenomenal.
I first sought out to see Salo when I was 15 years old back when I was sophomore in high school. I wanted the Criterion copy back then it meant a lot to have it, it was one of the rarest and most expensive Criterion DVDs not to mention all gossip I heard about the film, it being one of the most graphic/violent films ever made. So I bid for what I thought was an AUTHENTIC Criterion copy of the dvd on eBay….When when I got the package for the DVD it was a fake, the cover was a bad photocopy with no insert, the quality of the dvd was not Criterion but at least it played the movie. When I watched the movie without knowing about Pasolni I was like WTF is this shit? I saw teens eating shit from a plate and a lot of rape and then murder…and the vhs quality of the dvd made the movie look like a 42nd Street Aquarius release. Needless to say I took the DVD and put back in the case and threw the fucker on some train tracks and watched it get destroyed. I will revisit Salo but after I have taken in more of Pasolni’s work Watching Salo 1st is like watching Fassbinder’s Querelle as the first Fassbinder movie it should be viewed after you’ve taken in more of the directors work Imagine if you just saw Fredkin’s Cruising and thought wtf is wrong with this director, you would be missing out on classics like The French Connection, The Exorcist, To Live and Die in L.A, Sorcerer, and The Brinks
Job.
Although Querelle and Cruising both have some of the most spectacular lighting and cinematography I have ever seen in a film. Querelle has that awesome orange tint to everything while Crusing has this Blue tint to everything.
Nearly his entire filmography is available to watch on netflix so I don’t know what people are waiting for.
Pasolini is over-exposed.
He is so overexposed that he is on Criterion and you can buy him at Barnes and Noble.
Yeah Renault, and the masters Netflix used for CANTERBURY TALES and ARABIAN NIGHTS are much higher quality than any that are currently or have previously been released on home formats in the US, so it’s a great opportunity to see them looking as good as they ever have.
I believe the Mamma Roma, Hawks and Sparrows and La Ricotta (a short) is some of his shortest works. I am currently reading a book called:" Sex,The Self and the Sacred: Women in the Cinema of Pier Paolo Pasolini" Quite an interesting book so far!
He was quite a contraction in what he believe in and themes in brough forth in his films but a fasinating person! He is defin. worth researching about and quite underated.Who wrote the book on Pasolini that you’re reading?
Ehrenstein, thanks for the links to Pasolini’s contribution to the anthology film…have never seen this one!
Needless to say I took the DVD and put back in the case and threw the fucker on some train tracks and watched it get destroyed.
One of the coolest sentences I’ve read in a long time, Rudy.
Thank you Bart!
I’ve been exploring Pasolini in fits and starts over the past few years. I have come to the conclusion that if he isn’t a major figure, he should be seen as one. I don’t know if he easily fits into any niche; so much of his work is roughly hewn, on the edges, intimate, subjective, and “amateur” in the best sense, but his most notorious and effective work, Salo, is a masterpiece of control and distance.
Accattone has been grossly overlooked. A contemporary of Breathless, it tells a tale of a similarly aimless youth who comes to a Belmondian end. But where Breathless dresses up its characters in proto-hipsterism and cinematic references, the only references Pasolini makes are to life. Though owing in many ways to Neorealism on the one hand and a more spiritual Dreyeresque cinema on the other, Pasolini feels sui generis. It is almost as though he were given the tools for making movies and set out about it without worrying about what had come before. All he cares about is what he sees, what he thinks, and what he feels, and he’s going to get that to you in the most direct way possible.
What I’ve called the “amateur” nature of his filmmaking has both its strengths and its drawbacks. The frank, undressed directness is refreshing, but the several episodes of The Decameron are hit-and-miss, and it alternates between charming bawdiness and a film school attempt at Apatowian/Farrellian raunch. And The Gospel According to St. Matthew can be moving in its simplicity, but also trying to the patience, with mixed rewards. And I find Teorema a disaster, a meaningless, plodding parade of empty metaphors and evasive imagery of only intermittent beauty. Films like Teorema are the reason some people hate art films.
But it’s all worth it to get to Salo. The rumors are true: it is unwatchable; I myself had to avert my eyes for stretches, and the theater audience I saw it with shrunk appreciably as it wore on, the rattles of their emptied chairs echoing over the on-screen shrieks. But it is effective and thought-provoking, and seldom do you see thematic concerns so baldly dramatized. It is perhaps the ultimate depiction of a truly fascist mindset, a demonstration of a world where humanity means nothing and we are all made valueless, prisoners of the powerful and mercy to their whims. It is frightening and appalling, and while I suspect that it might reach a greater audience if it were just a bit less disgusting, it is only by pushing the limits of what is watchable that Pasolini can find them. It took me weeks to shake it off after I saw it, and I am still haunted by its images. I will never watch it again and can recommend it to no one; it is a masterpiece.
The Hawks and The Sparrows
I applaud “All the Best People” for capturing my sentiments re: Pasolini (though I give Teorema much more credit).
Sean John
Contrary to another user, Pasolini has always been one of the directors whose films I’ve been keen on watching. Thanks to a friend, I got to watch The Gospel…today, and I must say, its quite a shame that I’ve only now discovered him (alas, the sisyphean task of the cinephile). Any recs on what to see next?