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It is easy today to underestimate the contribution that
Pasolini and the post war neo-realists made to modern cinema.
When film started as a mostly personal, experimental experience
most of the subjects were ordinary events and people but,
with the dominance of Hollywood, films became more about idealised
and distorted realities. It wasn't until the emergence of
the neo-realists that film once again started to show the
experience of everyday life. One of its greatest proponents
was Pier Paolo Pasolini. Pasolini died, in what could so easily
have been a shot from one of his films, after he was bludgeoned
to death by a youth who accused him of making homosexual advances
towards him.
This
is the second box set of Pasolini's work and shows his move
away from his previous neo-realist roots. The set contains
Hawks and Sparrows, Oedipus Rex and the previously
unavailable Pigsty. All the prints have been restored
for this DVD release with a stereo track.
Hawks and Sparrows (1966 - black and white) was adapted
by Pasolini from his own original story. We find Pasolini
in a humorous mood, even the titles are sung in a faux operatic
manner for comic effect. Staring Toto - no, not the one from
the Wizard of Oz - one of Italy's most successful comic
actors, who utilised many of the visual motifs of Buster Keaton
and Charlie Chaplin - most notably the propensity of his character
to wear ill fitting clothes - and adapted them for a modern
audience. Such is the strength of the motif that he looks
positively anachronistic in a contemporary Italian setting
adding to the comic effect.
The films basic narrative revolves around a father (Toto)
and his son who, whilst walking down a road, come across a
crow who decides to join them and proceeds to bombard them
with Marxist questions regarding Christianity. Not content
with harassing the men, the crow takes them seven hundred
and fifty years into the past to St Francis - the one that
could talk to the animals like Dr Doolittle, but without the
outrageous pants - who teaches them to talk to the birds.
Full of the Holy Spirit, Toto teaches the sparrows and the
hawks to love and becomes a holy man, which works well until
one of the Hawks eats one of the sparrows... Bugger.
The film is actually quite funny even with the slight heavy
handedness of the underlying political/religious debate. Toto
shows why he deserved his comedic success and Ninetto Davoli
is the perfect foil.
Extras on the disc consist of the original theatrical trailer
and Notes for a Film on India (1968), a documentary
which reflects Pasolini's love of the culture and country,
though you can't help but feel that he was looking at the
orient through occidental eyes.
Oedipus Rex (1967 - colour), which gleefully proclaims
itself to be directed and written by Pasolini, is, in truth,
based on a very old Greek tragedy, which has been filmed numerous
times and kept Freud in cigars and cocaine for years. Combining
both a historical narrative, with a smattering of modernity,
which bookends the movie, it was filmed on Morocco. For those
who do not know, the story tells of one unfortunate child,
rescued during war, who, when he grows to manhood, by a set
of unfortunate circumstances ends up killing his father and
bedding his mother. For all its faults, of which there are
few, this remains a powerful film.
The
only extra on this disc is the original theatrical trailer.
Pigsty (1969 - colour) was directed and written by
Pasolini and owes more to the short lived surrealistic tradition
of cinema than Pasolini's own neo-realist roots. The film
contains two interrelated stories which examine the idea of
consumption through the acts of cannibalism and bestiality.
Pasolini would not return to his hatred of the middle-classes
or the extremes of experience until Salo (1975).
The most modern story in this collection, tells of a young
post war German, son of an ex-industrialist, who like his
contemporaries is self obsessed to the point of narcissism.
This lack of perspective leads him to commune with a pig,
rather than have sex with his girlfriend. The second section
deals with an almost mute, nameless soldier caught on a barren
wasteland whose desperation leads him to cannibalism.
Modern audiences will find the German sequences long and a
little dull. The personal rage that Pasolini felt, unfortunately,
for once, overcame his cinematic sensibility to create one
of his more flawed creations. Moreover, the film is a little
disconcerting to watch. Seemingly shot on a hand held camera
the picture has a noticeable judder at times and the two main
actors, Jean-Pierre Leaud and Anne Wiazemsky, have both been
dubbed into Italian.
Extra features on the disc include the original trailer and
The
Walls of Sana'a
(1964) which is a documentary which Pasolini made to send
to UNESCO in the hope that international aid could be sought
to save the city.
So, a nice mix of the profound and the profane for lovers
of Pasolini's work and if that wasn't enough the PR blurb
reliably informs me that the box set also comes with a copy
of Ragazzo, Pasolini's novel, published in English
for the first time.
Charles
Packer
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