French postcard by Editions La Malibran, Paris / Saint -Dié, no. MC 12. Pier Paolo Pasolini in Il Decameron / The Decameron (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1971).
Swiss postcard by Musée de l'Élysée, Lausanne / News Productions, Baulmes, no. 56409. Photo: John Philips. Caption: Pier Paolo Pasolini, Rome, 1962.
Big programme card by Cineteca Bologna for Il Cinema Ritrovato, XXXVI edizione, Selezione Cinema Ritrovato Young, 30 June 2022. Pierr Paolo Pasolini and Orson Welles on the set of La Ricotta (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1963).La Ricotta was an episode of the anthology film Ep.di.Ro.Go.Pa.G. (1963).
Italian postcard by Cineteca di Bologna. Photo: Mario Tursi. Maria Callas and Pier Paolo Pasolini during the shooting of Pasolini's Medea (1969).
American postcard by Fotofolio. Photo: Jerry Bauer, 1969.
Poetry in the old language of ‘Friulan’
Pier Paolo Pasolini was born in 1922 in Bologna. His parents were Carlo Alberto Pasolini, a lieutenant of the Italian army, and his wife Susanna Colussi, an elementary school teacher. He had a younger brother, Guidalberto. During the first years of his life, the family moved several times because Pasolini's father was sent to different barracks as a soldier. Carlo became famous for saving Benito Mussolini's life.
Pasolini began writing poetry at the age of 7, inspired by the natural beauty of the small town of Casarsa. From age ten, he wrote poetry in the old language of ‘Friulan’, which was spoken by peasants and his mother, Susanna. In 1939, Pier Paolo went to study at the University of Bologna. He also frequented the local cinema club. Pasolini always showed his friends a virile and strong exterior, hiding his inner turmoil. He published at his own expense his first collection of poems in Friulan, ‘Poesia a Casarsa’, in 1941.
Two years later, during the Second World War, he was drafted into the Italian army, at that time allied with the Germans. A few days after Italy's capitulation, Pasolini's regiment was captured by two Germans in a tank, but he managed to escape. He fled to Casarsa where he remained for several years. After the war, he joined the Italian Communist Party in 1947, but he was expelled after a scandal. After studying in Bologna, he settled permanently in Rome with his mother in the early 1950s.
He was acquitted of two indecency charges in 1950 and 1952. His father, an officer in the Fascist army, had died by then. His younger brother had been killed as a partisan during the war. Mother and son initially struggled to make ends meet. They lived in an impoverished suburb of Rome, the subject of his controversial novella ‘Ragazzi di vita’ (1955), and later of the film Accattone (1961). Another examination of life in the slums was ‘Una vita violenta’ (1959), translated as ‘A Violent Life’. In addition to literary praise, he received criticism for the 'obscene nature' of his novellas.
Later, Pasolini also wrote about Semiotics in a paper called 'Il cinema di poesia' (1965). In it he says that cinema is "a non-conventional and non-symbolic language", that expresses reality through reality itself. In 1957, together with Sergio Citti, Pasolini collaborated on Fellini's film Le notti di Cabiria / Nights of Cabiria (Federico Fellini, 1957), writing dialogue for the Roman dialect sections. Federico Fellini also asked him to work on dialogue for some episodes of La dolce vita (Federico Fellini, 1960). He also co-wrote La Lunga Notte del '43 /Long Night in '43 (Florestano Vancini, 1960) starring Gino Cervi and Belinda Lee. Pasolini made his debut as an actor in the crime drama Il Gobbo / The Hunchback of Rome (Carlo Lizzani, 1960) starring Gérard Blain.
Chinese postcard. Scene from Accattone (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1961).
Chinese postcard. Ettore Garofolo in Mamma Roma (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1962).
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, Berlin, no. 2823, 1967. Sent by mail in East Germany in 1974. Anna Magnani in Mamma Roma (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1962).
French postcard by L'étoile graphique for the retrospective 'Pasolini 100 ans!', 2022. Photo: SND (GroupeM6). Enrique Irazoqui in Il vangelo secondo Matteo (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1964). Caption: "Pasolini is like a meteorite". Bertrand Bonello.
French postcard by L'étoile graphique for the retrospective 'Pasolini 100 ans!', 2022. Photo: SND (GroupeM6). Ninetto Davoli and Totò in Uccellacci e uccellini / The Hawks and the Sparrows (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1966).
One of the few honest portrayals of Christ on screen
After making some strides in film in the late 1950s, Pier Paolo Pasolini debuted in 1961 with Accattone, starring Franco Citti. Its violent depiction of the life of a pimp in the slums of Rome caused a sensation. His second film was Mamma Roma (1962). Anna Magnani stars as an ex-prostitute who reunites with her son (Ettore Garofolo), but an extortion scheme threatens her aspirations for a decent life.
Pasolini was arrested in 1962 when La Ricotta, his segment of the portmanteau film Ro.Go.Pa.G. (Jean-Luc Godard, Ugo Gregoretti, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Roberto Rossellini, 1963) was considered blasphemous. In La Ricotta / Curd Cheese, Orson Welles plays a director who makes a lavish film about the life of Jesus Christ in a poor area. The central character is hoisted up on a cross for filming and dies there. Pasolini was given a suspended sentence.
Many expected that his next film, Il Vangelo secondo Matteo / The Gospel according to Matthew (1964), which presented the Biblical story in a realistic, stripped-down style, would cause a similar fuss. However, it was rapturously acclaimed as one of the few honest portrayals of Christ on screen and was praised even from within the Church. Jesus, a barefoot peasant, is played by a Spanish student, Enrique Irazoqui.
His next film was another surprise, the allegory Uccellacci e Uccellini / The Hawks and the Sparrows (1966) with Totò and Ninetto Davoli, who was Pasolini’s lover at the time. In the following years, Pasolini alternated between distinctly personal films and adaptations of classic literary texts, such as Edipo re / Oedipus Rex (1967), with Silvana Mangano as Jocasta and Franco Citti as Oedipus, and Medea (1969) starring Maria Callas.
In his more personal films, like Teorema / Theorem (1968) with Terence Stamp, Silvana Mangano and Massimo Girotti, and Porcile / Pigsty (1969) with Pierre Clémenti, he expressed his views on Marxism, atheism, fascism and homosexuality. His Trilogy of Life, based on medieval story collections, Il Decameron / The Decameron (1971) after Boccaccio, I Racconti di Canterbury / The Canterbury Tales (1972) after Geoffrey Chaucer, and Il Fiore delle Mille e Una Notte / Arabian Nights (1974) created confusion but was popular at the box office.
French postcard by L'étoile graphique for the retrospective 'Pasolini 100 ans!', 2022. Photo: SND (GroupeM6). Franco Citti in Edipo Re / Oedipus Rex (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1967). Caption: Six astonishingly rich films to (re)discover.
French postcard by L'étoile graphique for the retrospective 'Pasolini 100 ans!', 2022. Photo: SND (GroupeM6). Maria Callas in Medea (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1970).
Dutch postcard. Photo: Contact Film. Publicity for Il Decameron / The Decameron (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1971).
Vintage postcard by Moviestar, no. F113. Publicity still for Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma / Salò or the 120 days of Sodom (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1975).
Chinese postcard. Publicity still for Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma / Salò or the 120 days of Sodom (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1975).
His final and most notorious film
Pier Paolo Pasolini’s final and most notorious film was Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma / Salò or The 120 Days of Sodom (1975). The film is a relentlessly grim fusion of Benito Mussolini's Fascist Italy with the novel '120 Days of Sodom' by Marquis de Sade.
In Nazi-Fascist Northern Italy in 1943-44, four senior members of government, aided by henchmen and Nazi soldiers, kidnap a group of young men and women. They hold them for 120 days, subjecting them to all manner of torture, perversion, and degradation. The controversial and obscene film was banned in Italy and many other countries for several years.
On 2 November 1975, shortly after completing the film and before its release, Pasolini was found murdered on a beach in Ostia, near Rome. He was 53. The murder was gruesome, his heart had been burst, his face torn apart and he had been run over several times by a car. 17-year-old hustler Giuseppe Pelosi was arrested after being caught in Pasolini's car and confessing to the murder.
Although Pelosi was convicted, the circumstances of the murder were never sufficiently clarified. In 2005, Pelosi declared that Pasolini was killed by three men linked to political groups opposed to the director's films and politics. The police reopened the case in 2005 and 2009, but the court ruled in both cases that there were insufficient new facts to continue the investigation.
In 2014, American director Abel Ferrara made a biographical film about Pasolini starring Willem Dafoe. Giuseppe Pelosi died in 2017 in a hospital in Rome of lung cancer. Pier Paolo Pasolini is buried at the cemetery of Casarsa.
American postcard by Fotofolio, NY, NY, no. DM21. Photo: Duane Michals. Caption: Pasolini with anonymous boy, 1969.
Italian postcard by Cineteca Bologna. Photo: Angelo Novi / Cineteca Bologna. Caption: Pier Paolo Pasolini on the set of Il Vangelo secondo Matteo / The Gospel according to Matthew (1964).
Cover of the East German leaflet 'Film für Sie' by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb, no. 44/67. Photo: Anna Magnani and Ettore Garofolo in Mamma Roma (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1962). Their voices were dubbed in East Germany by Gisela May and Rainer Gerlach.
French postcard. Photo: Carlotta Films. Studio Canal. Poster for the film Il Vangelo secondo Matteo / The Gospel According to Matthew (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1964). Enrique Irazoqui played Jesus. Published on the occasion of the newly restored version of the film which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2003.
Spanish postcard by Editorial Filkasol. Japanese poster for Teorema (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1968), with Silvana Mangano and Terence Stamp.
French postcard by Editions F. Nugeron. Poster by Jouineau Bourduge. Ninetto Davoli in I racconti di Canterbury / The Canterbury Tales (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1972) based on Geoffrey Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales'. The film won the Golden Bear in Berlin in 1972.
Italian postcard by Cineteca Bologna. Photo: Mario Tursi / Archivo Fotografico Cineteca di Bologna. Pier Paolo Pasolini in Il Decameron / The Decameron (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1971).
Italian postcard by Cineteca Bologna. Photo: Deborah Beer / Cinemazero / Archivo Fotografica Cineteca di Bologna. Pier Paolo Pasolini on the set of Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma / Salò or the 120 days of Sodom (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1975).
Italian postcard by Il piùlibri. Caption: Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975). Poet, essayist and film director. He was killed by that barbarity which, unheard, he had painfully denounced.
Sources: Michael Brooke (IMDb), Wikipedia (Dutch and English) and IMDb.
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