Directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini • 1961 • Italy
Starring Franco Citti, Franca Pasut, Silvana Corsini
Poet and painter turned filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini courted controversy with his very first feature by using Catholic iconography and liturgical music to render a plaintive, brutally beautiful portrait of a shiftless Roman pimp and thief (then-nonprofessional Franco Citti, in a revelatory performance) whose life of petty crime turns increasingly desperate when the woman who supports him is imprisoned. Melding a hardscrabble neorealist milieu with classical influences, Pasolini offers a vision of underclass struggle as a kind of modern sainthood.
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Mamma Roma
Directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini • 1962 • Italy
Starring Anna Magnani, Ettore Garofolo, Franco CittiAnna Magnani is Mamma Roma, a middle-aged prostitute who attempts to extricate herself from her sordid past for the sake of her son. Highlighting director Pier Paolo Pasolini’s lifelong fascinatio...
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Love Meetings
Directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini • 1964 • Italy
Starring Pier Paolo Pasolini, Lello BersaniLet’s talk about sex. In this radically engaged and engaging documentary, Pier Paolo Pasolini takes to the streets, town squares, beaches, factories, and universities of 1960s Italy to solicit everyday cit...
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The Gospel According to Matthew
Directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini • 1964 • Italy, France
Starring Enrique Irazoqui, Margherita Caruso, Susanna PasoliniA biblical epic that only the Marxist dissident Pier Paolo Pasolini could make, this intensely faithful adaptation of Saint Matthew’s Gospel depicts the life and teachings of Jes...
