Born in Bologna, Italy, Pier Paolo Pasolini was born in 1925. His mother was a primary school teacher and his father served as a lieutenant in the Royal Italian Army. By the time he turned one year old, his father had been arrested as a result of gambling debts and his mother moved into her family’s house. Ultimately, Pasolini’s father became an advocate of Italian fascism.
In the meanwhile, at seven years old, he started to write verse and fell into literature that included Rimbaud, Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky and Coleridge as well. The young man distanced himself from his Catholic background eventually calling himself atheist. In 1939 he entered into the University of Bologna where he studied poetry & literature more deeply. During this period, he also got involved with films that were being shown there frequently. World War II came right when Pasolini was inducted into the army of Italy. He escaped German capture after Italy surrendered to them. Influenced by both his dad and society around him, he thought that he was fascist but after intense scrutiny and observation of his environment; Pasolini came up with the idea that only communism could assist mankind achieve its liberation through it
Vittorio (Franco Citti) is pimp who lives in the outskirts of post-war Rome and goes by the nickname, Acetone. When the gang running their own sex work operation injures his prostitute, Madelena (Silvana Corsini), she lands in prison after it was alleged that she had made false testimonies leaving Accattone without a source of income. However, trying to make amends with the mother of his child is not successful; she has been here before. No way. But then he meets Stella, a young working class girl and starts leaning on her to go into sex work for him. Not so good; a client takes advantage of her and Accattone throws her out of his car. He spends one day at an iron foundry. He began having intense dreams which made him think he would die and resulted in him stealing things as a means to survive. This is one life that will only come to a bad end, amidst many others A Tragedy!
Pasolini’s first full-length film followed his collaboration with Federico Fellini on the scripts of Nights of Cabiria and La Dolce Vita. In fact, the director was near to forty years old, spending most of his life as a poet and painter. Naturally, these skills show up in his films unmistakably. The neo-realism pressure is visible; Accattone is not one of Pasolini’s more fantastic films. At that time, it was fashionable to tell stories about workers, beginning with the movie Bicycle Thieves by Vittorio De Sica that started the trend. At the time, Pasolini observed that several famous Italian filmmakers were bourgeois Christian Democrats who had a bizarre parent-like attitude towards the poor masses. But this is not how Pasolini saw people who are forced to live at the bottom of society.
Pasolini wants to show a realistic Rome early in the movie. Accattone and his jobless friends sit at tables outside a café. The environment is not that of the grand architecture of the Roman Empire, but rather run down little houses and dirt roads. This Rome is different from what was on screen then in terms of cinema. It’s not Fellini’s night-time fantasy from La Dolce Vita. Pasolini knew it because he himself was there among the unemployed in post-war Rome. These poor neighborhoods were where he observed everyday life very closely. He did not select professional actors; instead, he used people from the area to play them who knew their parts well enough. The director preferred having his actors shot mostly in medium close-ups as he liked faces greatly for inspiration during shooting/production period. In some occasions, we could just see their eyes alone before they disappear completely from sight
Such would be Pasolini’s concern with “im-signes,” a cinematic version of Roland Barthes’ “im-signes.” This meant that no matter how realistic we think the images in movies are, they tend to have symbolic meanings. What appears to be real neo-realism is not very true. It combines ideas and concepts in pictures. Hence Pasolini argued that it was not necessary to have huge budgets for special effects since the real objects were transformed by the camera. All one needed was knowledge of image grammar and they could create any feeling they desired. In this way he turned Accattone, a street hustler’s story into another one about a religious saint.
Pasolini was an atheist but he took in the pictures and beliefs of the Catholic Church. He saw them as being part of Rome’s cultural tapestry. In this regard, they ceased to be behind his moral compass; instead, they became a way to understand those who lived around him. He happened to be gay, which made his outlook quite different from straight male Italian directors. His works incorporated homoeroticism coupled with religious iconography. According to him, his life had a religious sense that can be broken down as you watch his movies.
When Accattone dies, a saint is born in his place. He keeps trying to change and remake himself but it never works. The dance that happens every day among the proletariat’s and the poor people. Often we want an identity for ourselves which will not need much laboring over, because it is there for others to see who we are. In Accattone’s dream, what could have been is slightly visible before the end credits roll. According to Pasolini this glory can be achieved, but only after death and not through living. They are trapped in their poverty until they die making them a mass of saints. By employing little dialogue, images mostly and his trademark silence Pasolini accomplishes all these yet we can hear when they talk.
When Pasolini made sure that the film’s message got across, he incorporated church music into it. The soundtrack is full of Bach’s compositions. Music, a church bell sound, a crash and heavy breathing are what Accattone’s dream consists of. This has reoccurred in the film’s final scene to give it meaning. The fact that our protagonist experiences these sounds before they actually happen lifts the film away from strict realism and into something else. Every woman that Accatone spends time with represents facets of life and his wrong choices but it is already too late to do anything about them. The characters often speak like prophets thus making this movie seem religious as well.
Accattone involves the removal of religious iconography from an exclusive association with the Church and as something that stands for the human condition. Pasolini, however, did not only do this through one movie and it is within a couple of reviews that we will look at his Catholic Church-endorsed The Gospel According to St. Matthew in which Jesus is transformed into a peasant revolutionary (and Pasolini draws parallels between his teachings and communism). In these films, there is sort of a new gospel being written- one which tells about a post-war world where those who have lived many generations on the bottom side of life are made out to be glorious enough to warrant epic tales.
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