{"id":20361,"date":"2023-06-26T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-06-26T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=20361"},"modified":"2023-06-25T17:48:07","modified_gmt":"2023-06-26T00:48:07","slug":"pasolini-begins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/pasolini-begins\/","title":{"rendered":"Pasolini Begins"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As a 20-year-old film student, Bernardo Bertolucci was given the unique opportunity to serve as an assistant to poet and novelist Pier Paolo Pasolini on his directorial debut, 1961\u2019s Accattone<\/em>. In the years preceding it, Pasolini worked steadily as a screenwriter in the Italian film industry, but came to directing with no formal training behind the camera \u2013 or any preconceived notions about how to use it. In terms of blocking and shot composition, he referenced Renaissance paintings rather than other people\u2019s films, leading Bertolucci to describe the experience as being akin to witnessing \u201cthe birth of cinema.\u201d At the very least, it was the birth of Pasolini\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When he made Accattone<\/em>, Pasolini was intimately familiar with depicting the lives of pimps and prostitutes onscreen. Co-writing the scripts for Fellini\u2019s Nights of Cabiria<\/em>, Mauro Bolognini\u2019s The Big Night<\/em>, Franco Rossi\u2019s Death of a Friend<\/em>, and Luciano Emmer\u2019s Girl in the Window<\/em> (not to mention a little film called La Dolce Vita<\/em>) eminently qualified him to tell the story of a pimp cut off from his sole means of support when his stable of one is arrested on a charge of perjury and sent to jail. Even before that happens, the first news he gets about her is that she\u2019s been hit by a motorcycle and is laid up in bed. Naturally, his instinct is to browbeat her into going back out that night, injured leg or no injured leg. He\u2019s not about to pick up a trade so he can earn his own living, after all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As portrayed by Franco Citti (younger brother of writer Sergio Citti, of one of Pasolini\u2019s most trusted collaborators), Vittorio \u201cAccattone\u201d Cataldi is an indolent lay-about who hangs out with his similarly unemployed friends all day. (It\u2019s telling that they berate Accattone\u2019s younger brother for having a job when he passes them on the way to and from work.) Unsatisfied with his lot in life, he has the gall to blame his girlfriend Maddalena for dragging him down. \u201cYou think you bought me with the dirty money you give me every day?\u201d he asks petulantly. \u201cYou ruined me.\u201d It\u2019s only after Maddalena is out of the picture that Pasolini reveals he\u2019s married and has a child, but Accattone is persona non grata to his in-laws, who have zero interest in showing him charity. While visiting his wife\u2019s place of work, though, he meets one of her coworkers and hatches a plan to turn her head and turn her out in Maddalena\u2019s stead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Upon its release, Accattone<\/em> garnered so much attention for the novice director (some of which came in the form of virulent attacks from the right-wing press) that a follow-up was guaranteed. First, though, Pasolini gave consent for his assistant to take over a project he had written the story for, but put aside to make Accattone<\/em> instead. Working with Sergio Citti, Bernardo Bertolucci fleshed out Pasolini\u2019s story \u2013 with the proviso that the producer wanted \u201ca Pasolini-type film\u201d \u2013 and was given the job of directing it. Released in 1962, when Bertolucci was just 21, La Commare Secca<\/em> (shown in the US as The Grim Reaper<\/em>) follows an investigation into the murder of a prostitute as told through the testimony of witnesses who were on the scene. Its Rashomon<\/em>-like structure reveals more about the witnesses than it does the victim, though, with their constant refrains of \u201cI was just passing through\u201d (i.e. \u201cIt has nothing to do with me\u201d). Also, there are many discrepancies between what people say under police interrogation and what Bertolucci\u2019s restless camera reveals about what they actually did. It\u2019s difficult to single out the guilty when no one is innocent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cShe was a whore!\u201d cries the perpetrator when he\u2019s identified and arrested, adding, \u201cWhat did I do? What did I do wrong?\u201d This inability to see someone who sells her body as a person with agency and value carries over to Pasolini\u2019s next film, 1962\u2019s Mamma Roma<\/em>, his first with an established star. Anna Mangani plays the larger-than-life title character, who\u2019s ecstatic as the film opens because her pimp Carmine (Franco Citti again) is getting married. This means she can have her freedom and, most importantly, be reunited with her teenage son, who\u2019s been raised by relatives out in the sticks. Bringing the boy to Rome only exposes him to bad influences, though, and he fails to appreciate the sacrifices she\u2019s made \u2013 and continues to make \u2013 on his behalf.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One narrative strategy Pasolini adopts in both Accattone<\/em> and Mamma Roma<\/em> is skipping over potentially dramatic scenes and forcing viewers to play catch-up. In the former, the big one is Maddalena\u2019s arrest, which precipitates Accattone\u2019s eventual downfall. In Mamma Roma<\/em>, the first comes just before her move to Rome, when Carmine seeks Mamma Roma out and demands money she has to go back onto the streets for a couple more weeks to get for him. In the space of a cut, she\u2019s laughing as she loudly announces she\u2019s leaving them for good, but this moment \u2013 a lengthy tracking shot as she walks and talks with whoever enters her orbit \u2013 is mirrored by one later on when she\u2019s all tears after being forced to go back to work for him. \u201cYou should have known I\u2019d be back sooner or later,\u201d Carmine says, echoing Accattone by blaming Mamma Roma for his situation. \u201cYou ruined me,\u201d he whines. \u201cYou turned me into a pimp.\u201d He\u2019s also enough of a bastard that after promising not to tell her son, he does anyway \u2013 another scene Pasolini elides.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having thoroughly explored modern Rome\u2019s seedy underbelly with his first two features, Pasolini next turned to the New Testament, taking a satiric swipe at pious Biblical epics with La Ricotta<\/em>, his segment of the 1963 omnibus Ro.Go.Pa.G.<\/em>, starring Orson Welles as a director attempting to film a crucifixion scene. That was a warmup for the following year\u2019s The Gospel According to St. Matthew<\/em>, a decidedly down-to-earth depiction of the life of Christ. A curious choice of subject for an avowed atheist, but for the remainder of his career, Pasolini the director \u2013 and the man \u2013 would prove to be full of surprises.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAccattone,\u201d<\/em><\/a> <\/em>\u201cLa Commare Secca,\u201d<\/em><\/a> and <\/em>\u201cMamma Roma\u201d<\/em><\/a> are streaming on the Criterion Channel. \u201cAccattone\u201d and \u201cMamma Roma\u201d are also included in Criterion\u2019s <\/em>\u201cPasolini 101\u201d<\/em><\/a> boxed set.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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