PASOLINI, PIER PAOLO

(1922–1975)

Director, novelist, poet, and critic, Pierpaolo Pasolini was born and educated in Bologna and studied first art history and then (after an interlude in which he was drafted into the Italian army) modern literature. After graduating, Pasolini went to Rome and drifted into the underworld of prostitutes — both male and female—their procurers, and petty criminals that populate his films and stories. His first novel was banned for obscenity, a punishment that did not stop his book of poems,Le ceneri di Gramsci(Gramsci’s Ashes, 1957) from winning the prestigious Viareggio Prize. In 1959, he published a second novel about slum life,Una vita violente(A Violent Life).

Pasolini’s first feature film, Accatone, was issued in 1961.The film’s naturalism—like his novels set in Rome’s underworld— created an uproar in Italy but was rewarded with international critical acclaim. The following year, Pasolini was given a suspended prison sentence for blasphemy after the release of RoGoPaG, a collection of four shorts directed by Roberto Rossellini, Jean-Luc Godard, Pasolini, and Ugo Gregoretti. Paradoxically, his next major film,Il Vangelo secondo Matteo(The Gospel According to St. Matthew, 1964), is widely recognized as one of the finest biblical movies ever made; even the Vatican awarded it a prize. Pasolini, a Marxist and nonbeliever, strove to present a sober picture of the story of Christ (who was played by a Spanish architecture student) and to portray the spirituality of the Christian religion—a dimension he believed that Marxists neglected. He followed Matteo with the fablelikeUccellacci e uccellini(The Hawks and Sparrows, 1966). During the student uprisings of the late 1960s, he took an equivocal position, writing a famous poem called “Vi odio figli di papa”(literally, “I Hate You Daddy’s Boys”) that suggested the real working-class heroes were the policemen being assaulted by the upper-class revolutionaries.

Pasolini’s subsequent films were for the most part concerned with explicit sexual themes. Teorema(Theorem, 1968) was prosecuted unsuccessfully for obscenity; he also made a brilliantly bawdy film version of Boccaccio’sDecamerone(The Decameron, 1971). His last film,Salo, o le centoventi giornate di Sodoma(Salo,or the 120 Days of Sodom, 1975), was an adaption of De Sade set in the dying days of Benito Mussolini’s regime. The film displays Pasolini’s fascination with cruelty and sexual violence, to which he fell victim. In 1975, he was murdered near Rome by a homosexual prostitute.

See alsoCinema; Literature; Il Sessantotto.