Word: pasolini
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Over the course of his 14 year film-making career, Pasolini created 22 major films and wrote numerous screenplays for other directors. His films range in style from the gritty, black-and-white, neo-realist-influenced "Accatone" (1961), to the mystical, comical "Hawks and Sparrows" (1966), to his mythical, often erotic version of "The Decameron" (1971), right up to the brutal, disturbing "Salo...
...Pasolini did not even approach the world of film-making until he was nearly forty years old, already one of Italy's most respected poets. His overabundance of artistic activity and his need to express his many, often conflicting, cultural, artistic, and political points of view followed Pasolini throughout his life. They lead to the contradictions and ambiguities which permeated not only Pasolini's personal life, but also, it seems, his every work...
...Pasolini's difficulty in reconciling his fervent Marxism with his profound sense of spirituality causes the foremost contradiction in his work and one of the few constants throughout his career. Disillusioned with the Communist Party and the Catholic Church, he criticized both. Yet even in criticizing them, he clung to them, commenting on them incessantly in his films. This central conflict generates much of the beauty of his neo-realist-inspired "Mamma Roma...
...film features one-time prostitute Mamma Roma (played by Anna Magnani, one of the most popular actresses of neo-realism, with whom Pasolini had ideological as well as artistic disputes, but who nonetheless plays exquisitely what she had called "the most important role I have played so far"). After her former pimp, Carmine (Franco Citti), marries a well-to-do lady from the countryside, Mamma Roma attempts to lead a respectable life, selling vegetables in an open air Roman market. More importantly, she brings her son, Ettore (Ettore Garofolo), to Rome, with the hopes of providing him a good education...
...might guess, given Pasolini's ideological stance and neorealist training, this happiness does not last long. After Carmine forces Mamma Roma back on the streets, Ettore falls in with a crowd of young delinquents. He quits school and his job and begins to steal, even from Mamma. This soon leads him to prison, as it leads the film to its tragic ending...