Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A true master, 11 April 2007
Pier Paolo Pasolini is undoubtedly one of cinema's great masters - one of the ultimate European auteur directors, who left an enduring legacy of controversy and great films behind him (the two factors not always linked).
His more famous film works are undoubtedly the one's which tackled the biggest and most controversial subject matter - the life of Christ in 'The Gospel According To St Matthew' on the one hand and 'Salo' from The Marquis de Sade's '120 Days of Sodom' on the other. Much of his (specifically later) work was in this adaptation vein such as the trilogy 'The Decameron', 'The Canterbury Tales' and 'Arabian Nights', however, the director started life in the neo-realist style - which 'Accatone' contained here shows. This is a grittily realistic story about a Rome pimp, showing the harsh ups and downs it takes as he tries to get by. Acted impressively by Franco Citti this is an engaging and sometimes brutal tale.
Another side to Pasolini's film-making is shown here in the second feature 'Love Meetings', a documentary which involved the director speaking to a host of different Italians about sex - okay so it's not dramatically different to other films in subject matter, however, Pasolini's approach is once again interesting and his investigative social and political aims make for a facinating film.
Ever involved in controversy the director's segment of the third film collected here - the compilation feature 'RoGoPaG', also featuring efforts from European masters Godard, Rosselini and Gregoretti, led to his arrest and imprisonment due to its blasphemous content. The work 'La Ricotta' shows a film version of the passion being shot by an arrogant director (played by Orson Welles) in a poor area - and the interaction between the different types of people within the film offers cutting satire.
This is a great box set offering not just these various reasons for why Pasolini is held up as a complex, controversial and masterful director but also through the inclusion of one of his novels - 'A Violent Life' - it hints at some of the many other talents and facets (author, poet, essayist, painter, political thinker etc) that there were to this fascinating man. This box set is part of a series and the second one looks great - including 'Pigsty', 'Hawks and Sparrows', 'Oedipus Rex' and the India documentary as well.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Accatone - 5 stars, 25 Oct 2008
Though more and more re-releases are appearing on DVD, it's a sad comment on the tastes of the industry that so many masterpieces are either unavailable or incredibly difficult to get hold of. At the time of writing (Oct 08) "Accatone" is a case in point - only currently available in the UK as part of a very expensive 3-disc set (though you can import it from Amazon.com for $25). The transfer that you get is straight from video, complete with fizzy lines, not remastered, and with white subtitles against the ubiquitous white shirts and jerseys characters wear - large parts of the English dialogue are unreadable).
But despite this it's good to have this late masterpiece of Italian neo-realism in any form. When it appeared, "Accattone" caused quite a stink and there were calls for it to be banned - Pasolini starting as he meant to go on. At the time, Italy was the tiger economy of Europe, Rome was seen as ultra-cool, ultra-fashionable and this portrait of the ultra-marginalised, dirt-poor of Rome threw a piss-pot in the face of national self-regard. This is the obverse side of "La Dolce Vita", a tale of a drifter, a worthless self-serving idler (Accattone means beggar, and is also the nickname of Vittorio, the central character) whose only income is from pimping his girlfriend. At one point he steals a gold necklace from his own 5-year-old son, and though he says to himself "How could I do such a thing?"he does so with a smile on his face, as if he really thinks it's a rather cute thing to do.
But his life changes when he meets a young blond and falls in love. He determines that he is going to support the girl this time, and tries a job shifting tons of iron in the blazing heat. Unsurprisingly he can't hack it. He resorts to theft with a couple of mates, gets caught by the police (put on to him by his ex-girlfriend out of revenge), steals a motor bike to escape, and dies in a crash.
It is an almost unremittingly bleak film, full of painful scenes: the group of men who pick up a whore to beat her up; the girlfriend's first hesitant attempt on the game (with a sacristan - nice anti-clerical touch), which triggers his realisation of his own tenderness; her offer to go back to the streets when work is almost killing him. All work is seen as back-breaking exploitation, and living off your woman is a rational choice in the face of the harshness of capitalism. When at the end Vittorio is dying, he says, "At last I'm happy". The life of the poor is hell, and there is no other way out.
It would be unbearable, there are flashes of warmth, or at least tenderness. In a dream sequence, Vittorio is shut out from his own funeral, but looking over the churchyard wall he begs to gravedigger to move his plot a little, so he can rest in the sun; that is the sum of of his ambition. Everyone's dreams are so small-scale, it's heart-breaking. The thieves wander Rome for hours with a handcart, just looking for an opportunity. When it comes, it's not a heist, but a quick dash for a few salamis and a leg of ham.
The cast is amateur, and sometimes it shows in glances to camera. Vittorio is played by Franco Citti, who later turned professional and became something of an alter ego for Pasolini, as well as turning up briefly in "The Godfather". Pasolini's love of butch Italian rough trade is seen in lots of long, loving close-ups on these rootless but beautiful young men. The effect is to strain the bounds of neo-realism towards something altogether more poetic. At first it seems that this is one of those films where the director likes his characters a lot more than the audience will, and he is in danger of an uncritical acceptance of macho which casts all women as victims. But it's Pasolini's great achievement that ultimately he invests the hopeless Accatone with great dignity and sympathy. Pasolini would chew the carpet at the idea, but there's more than a touch of the religious about this film. Everyone can find redemption, and this petty pimp becomes almost Christ-like, though there is no Heaven, only a smashed head on a kerbstone.
The nearest comparison film-wise is probably Fellini's "Nights of Cabiria"Nights of Cabiria - Criterion Collection [1957] (REGION 1) (NTSC), which Pasolini co-scripted, and there are also elements of "I Vitelloni",I Vitelloni another study of aimless young men. But Fellini is fatally sentimental, ie conformist, where Pasolini tells it like it is.
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