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Pier Paolo Pasolini
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Three films from acclaimed Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini are collected in this exclusive three-DVD set. Pasolini's debut, Accattone! (1961, 120 mins.), is a milestone in Italian filmmaking. A parable of redemption set in the slums of Rome, the film follows the thief, beggar and pimp, Accattone (Franco Citti), as he tries to reform his love, Stella. The Hawks and the Sparrows (1964, 88 mins.) is a powerful, tragicomic fable which shows two delightful innocents caught between the Church and Marxism. Pasolini's moving epic, The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1965, 136 mins.), uses non-actors, rugged Southern Italian landscapes and towns, cinema-verite techniques, and expressive close-ups to present an anguished, determined Christ.
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Thirty years ago, the Italian poet and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini was killed in Rome by a teenage boy he picked up in the Trastavere. This unnerving psychodrama examines lingering suspicions that the artist was murdered by neo-fascist elements and presents a riveting picture of Italian politics and society in the aftermath of WWII. Azama examines the iconoclast’s conflicted relationship with Italian Communism and the notorious, troubled love life that locked him in a life-long struggle against homophobia and the suppression of his now-celebrated work.
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Relating his facts in straight-on documentary fashion, Pier Paolo Pasolini's 1964 Biblical film stars Enrique Irazoqui as Jesus. In it, Christ and his followers are depicted as gentle radicals working against the grain of the unjust Roman power structure. Typically offbeat Pasolini touches include having Satan disguise himself as a Catholic priest and the casting of the director's own mother as the Virgin Mary. The music is selected from a variety of sources, from Bach to American spirituals. Il Vangelo Secondo Matteo was released in the U.S. as The Gospel According to St. Matthew -- much to the discomfort of Pasolini, who didn't want Matthew designated as a saint. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
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One of the most outstanding, enigmatic characters of the European intelligentsia in the latter half of the twentieth century, Pier Paolo Pasolini holds an important place in Western cultural history, particularly the history of the 1960s. As the author of poetry in the local language of his Italian province, as well of novels and theoretical essays, and as the director of remarkable films, and ... as a graphic artist and painter, Pasolini concentrated on timeless, archaic themes: the fate of humanity, peasant life, religion, sexuality, death. By moving outside of accepted norms, and by creating images of extraordinary clarity and focus on the subjects of religion, sex and politics, he became one of the greatest provocateurs in Italian society. Pasolini and Death, published in commemoration of the thirtieth anniversary of his death, provides insight into his moral concepts and ideals through his essays, films, drawings and paintings. One of the provocative propositions raised here is that, from an early point, Pasolini's understanding of art and his worldview carried within them the idea of violent death, and that he might have consciously sought that fate--sought out the circumstances in which he was murdered--in order to reconcile his life and work. Following the 2005 retraction of a central suspect's confession, the Rome police have reopened his case.
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Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-75) was renowned as a controversial poet, novelist and essayist before he even considered picking up a movie camera. His unique sensibility was shaped by the mystical Christianity practiced by peasants in the region of Friuli, where he spent his youth, as well as Marxism, particularly the variant espoused by Antonio Gramsci, founder of the Italian Communist Party. And then there’s the well-known fact of his homosexuality, which he sometimes experienced as some strange kind of excess grafted onto his being.
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"There in Versuta [1945], Pier Paolo had met Tonuti Spagnol, a fourteen-year-old boy, the son of peasants. He gave him lessons, taught him to write verses, and Tonuti wrote a few poems. [...] Before Ninetto Davoli, Tonuti was Pier Paolo's true love, a love that was to end in later years when the boy became a man and the 'fragraqnce' of Versuta a painful memory."
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Pier Paolo Pasolini