Pier Paolo Pasolini

1
Pier Paolo Pasolini

• Life of Controversy
• "The mark which has dominated all my work is this
  longing for life, this sense of exclusion, which
  doesn't lessen but augments this love of life."

2
Childhood

• Pier Paolo Pasolini was born on March 5, 1922, in
  Bologna, Italy.
• He was the son of a soldier, Carlo Alberto, who
  was famous for saving Mussolinis life, and an
  elementary school teacher.
• His family moved constantly when he was little,
  and Pier did not have many friends, so he used
  his free time to write poetry and literature.
• He began writing poetry at the age of seven.

3
Early Works and Young Adulthood

• In 1941, at the age of 19, Pasolini published his
  first book of poetry, Versi a Casarsa, which he
  printed at his own expense.
• The poems in Versi a Casarsa were written in the
  Friulian language which he learned from his
  mother.
• In 1942, his family took shelter in tranquil
  Casarsa, and he had to face the erotic disquiet
  he had suppressed during his adolescent years.
• Famously wrote A continuous perturbation without
  images or words beats at my temples and obscures
  me".

4
World War Two

• In 1943, he was drafted into World War Two, and
  imprisoned by the Germans.
• He managed to escape by disguising himself as a
  peasant.
• He returned to Casarsa, which was suffering
  Allied bombardments and forced enrollments into
  the army by the Italian Social Republic, but he
  tried to remain detached from the events of war.
• Along with his mother, he began teaching the
  students who could not make it to school due to
  the war.

5
Tragedy

• During this time period, Pier experienced his
  first homosexual love for one of his students,
  just when a Slovenian schoolgirl was falling in
  love with Pasolini
• On February 12, 1945, his fragile emotional state
  was further weakened when his brother Guido was
  killed in an ambush

6
Communism

• In 1946, Pasolini joined the Italian Communist
  Party.
• He was expelled, however, three years later for
  moral indignity.
• The charge was specifically for alleged
  homosexuality, corruption of minors, and obscene
  acts in public.
• Following this he fell in with the local
  underworld of prostitutes, pimps, hustlers and
  thieves.
• This experience inspired many of his future
  artistic works.

7
Success

• 1954 - Pier left his teaching job and published
  his first important collection of dialectic poems
  La Meglio Gioventu.
• 1955 Ragazzi di vita, his first novel, was
  published.
• This work achieved great success but was received
  negatively by Italian Government and prompted a
  lawsuit against Pasolini. (Though found innocent
  of all charges, Pier still became a victim of the
  Italian tabloids.)

8
Success

• 1957 Pasolini collaborated to Frederico
  Fellinis film Le notti di Cabiria.
• 1957 His collection Le Ceneri di Gramsci earned
  the Viareggio Prize. (poetry prize)
• 1960 He made his debut as an actor in the film
  Il gobbo.

9
Accatone

• 1961 Pier directed Accatone in the slums with a
  non-professional cast.
• As with his literary debut, his film debut became
  the subject of much controversy
• moralists held up the picture as proof of the
  need for stricter censorship guidelines.
• Overseas, the feature garnered honors at the
  Montreal and Karlovy Vary film festivals.

10
More Success

• 1962 His second film, Mamma Roma, won both the
  International Critics' Prize at the Venice Film
  Festival and Italy's Silver Ribbon.

11
Too Much Success

• Pasolini next collaborated on the 1962 anthology
  RoGoPaG.
• His segment, "La ricotta," starred Orson Welles
  as a filmmaker directing a movie on the life of
  Christ
• Intended as an attack against the vulgarization
  of spirituality, the piece was prosecuted for
  "publicly maligning the religion of the state"
  and banned
• Pasolini received a four-month suspended prison
  sentence

12
Il Vangelo Secondo Matteo

• 1964 - Though an avowed atheist, Pasolini began
  work on Il Vangelo Secondo Matteo, another
  retelling of the Christ story shot in the arid
  foothills of southern Italy. 
• The film turned out to be a solemn, sincere
  illustration of the Gospel which many touted as
  among the greatest Biblical adaptations ever
  created.
• The worldwide critical response was highly
  favorable, and in addition to a pair of awards at
  Venice it also won the grand prize from the
  International Catholic Film Office

13
Ucellacci e Ucellini

• 1966 The comic fable Ucellacci e Ucellini was
  produced, featuring the comic actor Toto

14
Teorema

• 1968 Pasolini produced Teorema, which was a
  dissection of a wealthy Milanese family through
  the slogan "make love, not war".
• The most talked-about of all of his films. A
  sexually provocative tale of a mysterious
  stranger whose influence leaves a bourgeois
  family forever altered
• Originally honored by the International Catholic
  Film Office, but their award was rescinded after
  the picture was denounced by the Vatican
• Secular authorities also charged the film with
  obscenity and attempted to block its
  distribution, but upon Pasolini's acquittal its
  release was allowed

15
Salo, o le Centoventi Giomate di Sodoma

• 1975 Salo, o le Centoventi Giomate di Sodoma,
  was in many respects the most disturbing of all
  of his films
• An adaptation of the de Sade novel set at the
  tail end of World War II, it depicted the
  atrocities suffered by a group of kidnapped boys
  and girls at the hands of their Nazi captors
• Deemed one of the most disquieting motion
  pictures ever filmed, Salo was Pasolini's final
  work

16
Death

• On November 2, 1975, Pier Paolo Pasolini was
  brutally murdered.
• His body was discovered on waste ground near
  seaside resort of Ostia.
• A week before his death, Pasolini had predicted
  that he would be killed, probably very soon.
• After bludgeoning the director to death, his
  killer then repeatedly drove over the corpse in
  Pasolini's own Alfa Romeo.
• A young male prostitute (Giuseppe Pelosi) was
  tried and convicted for the murder in 1976.
• He had started to investigate the Mafia's link to
  the prostitution business.
• Pasolini's huge unfinished novel, Petrolio, was
  published in 1992.