He would have celebrated his 91st birthday on the very
day, March 5th, but Pier Paolo Pasolini has the dubious distinction of being
the only great filmmaker who was murdered, most probably by the Mafia at the
request the Italian right-wing which loathed the openly gay, Marxist, atheist,
& popular artist, poet, actor, writer, cinematographer, composer, political
theorist & filmmaker with 25 films to his credit. In the in the late 1940s
& 1950s, Pasolini was a dedicated Communist, but was kicked out of the party
for being openly gay.
In November 1975, he picked up a teenager hustler &
was murdered by being run over by his own car. The hustler later recanted his
confession & claimed that 3 men with Southern Italian accents killed
Pasolini. Details of the crime make it impossible to have been the work of just
one person.
I saw Pasolini's final film at the Film Forum in NYC in
1976. Do not see it on a full stomach. It is the most nauseating work of art I
have ever seen- The 120 Days Of Sodom is an updating of the Marquis de Sade's
1780s novel to the final days of Mussolini's depraved inner circle. Shortly
after its release he was murdered.
I was mesmerized by his film- Teorema, where an angelic
& too handsome Terence Stamp seduces everyone in a bourgeois Milanese
household- the religious maid, the icy mother, the homely daughter, the
closeted son, even the powerful father, amid the emotional fireworks, each one
to comes to a new understanding of their life.
If you are brave, remember that his films outrage, also
check out: The Gospel According To Saint Matthew, The Hawks & The Sparrows,
Oedipus Rex, Medea (with Maria Callas in her only film role, albeit
non-singing), The Decameron, Canterbury Tales, or Arabian Nights.
Can you tell that I once had 4 semesters of Film Theory
& History of Film?
Callas may have made only one movie, but there's a lot of her on film and video. There are some wonderful clips from her La Scala performances in the opera Medea by Cherubini. I eventually bought the video tape of Pasolini's Medea, and you have made me very interested in seeing Teorema -- Terrence Stamp in anything is always worth seeing.
ReplyDelete- i love Teorema!
ReplyDelete'Salò', very, very, very disturbing.
ReplyDeleteHave you seen 'Comizi d'amore' ('Love Meetings') his documentary released in 1964? Street interviews with some very unexpected responses, and one or two extremely arresting gentlemen.