Pasolini, Pier Paolo
1922–1975

Pier Paolo Pasolini was a poet, novelist, and essayist, but is best known as a filmmaker whose films challenged the moral, political, and aesthetic norms of Italian cinema. Pasolini was linked variously with the Italian communists associated with Antonio Gramsci, the mystical Christianity of the Friuli region, and with the lower-class denizens of the Roman suburbs about whom he made his first films. His homosexuality was also widely known. He was murdered in 1975.

EARLY LIFE AND INFLUENCES

Pasolini was born in Bologna on March 5, 1922. Pasolini's parents brought together his father's ancient noble family from Romagna and his mother's more humble and agrarian Friulians. His father, who had been a soldier renowned for having saved Benito Mussolini's life, had trouble with alcoholism and moved frequently for his job. Thus Pasolini was, as he put it, "a nomad," moving from Bologna to Parma, Conegliano, Belluno, Sacile, Cremona, and back to Bologna. His brother Guido, with whom he had a close relationship, was born in 1925. In 1926 his father was arrested for gambling debts, so Pier, his mother, and his brother moved back to Casarsa in Friuli.

Pasolini was interested in literature from a very early age. He identified with the French poet Arthur Rimbaud, and began writing poetry at age seven. Moving around made the timelessness of great literature all the more attractive to Pasolini, so he read widely in the works of William Shakespeare, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In 1939 he entered the Literature College of the University of Bologna, where he also frequented the cinema club. He also became passionately interested in soccer.

Still young during the beginnings of World War II, Pasolini's sympathies were anti-Fascist. He published his first collections of poems in 1941 at his own expense and edited a literary magazine but was fired by its director, who was aligned with the Fascists. He got a job teaching. During this time, Pasolini's anti-Fascist sympathies were transformed into pro-communist leanings. His family moved back to Casarsa in 1942 to wait out the war in greater safety. He was drafted into the Italian army in 1943 and was imprisoned by the Germans, but he escaped, returned to Casarsa, and began working with other intellectuals to elevate the status of the Friulian dialect. Friulian was important to Pasolini not only as the language of his mother's family but also as an anti-Fascist and anti-Catholic Church action, because the Fascists wanted a standardized Italian language that eliminated dialects and the church reserved the use of dialects for priests.

The wrangling among small groups of rebellious communists in Italy ended in a massacre of one group by another, and among the massacred was Pasolini's younger brother. Guido's death made Pier more politically active, especially on behalf of the Friulian language and Friulian autonomy. He also fell in love with a male student, an event that marked his first openly homosexual relationship. He continued to write poetry, publishing several small collections. He also became more openly active on behalf of the communists, becoming a member of the Italian Communist Party.

In 1949 Pasolini was charged with the corruption of minors and public obscenity, fired from his teaching job, and expelled from the Communist Party. In 1950 he and his mother moved to Rome, struggling to survive in the suburbs among lower-class workers, criminals, and others from the country. During this time he became familiar with the kinds of characters who would people his first few films. Unemployed, Pasolini began writing his first novel. He also became a proofreader for the Italian film studio Cinecittà and tried selling his own books at local bookstalls. He finally returned to teaching, while continuing to write and work on literary magazines.

But Pasolini was never to be far from controversy. He published his first novel, Ragazzi di vita (1955), which, though successful, was declared obscene and removed from bookstores. The government could not prove its case, so the book was returned. Pasolini was repeatedly accused of crimes from burglary to obscenity, but he was never convicted.

FILM CAREER

In 1956 Pasolini began his film career, writing the Roman dialect dialogue for Federico Fellini's film Nights of Cabiria. He continued to write and publish poetry and essays and in 1961 made his first film, Accatone, about the Italian underworld. The film was off-limits for viewers under eighteen. In 1962 he directed Momma Roma, a film about a prostitute and her son. He then directed "La ricotta," an episode in the compilation film, RoGoPaG (1963), which was removed from the compilation while Pasolini was tried for vilifying religion. He nonetheless continued directing films that combined religious themes with realistic, down-to-earth, and often grim portrayals of life. In 1964 he made The Gospel According to St. Matthew, an adaptation of the life of Jesus. His 1968 release Theorem was a comic film about the sexual unraveling of a bourgeois family. His late-1960s directorial work also included Oedipus Rex. (1967) and Medea (1969).

Pasolini's films became increasingly grand in scale, folkloric, and openly sexual in content. He traveled the world, going to India, Kenya, Israel, Ghana, and Guinea. He is perhaps best known for the trilogy of classical folktales made in the early 1970s: The Decameron (1971), based on Giovanni Boccaccio's work; The Canterbury Tales (1972); and Arabian Nights (1974). His final work was Salò (1975), an intensely graphic rendition of material from the Marquis de Sade.

Pasolini's films often won awards, including honors at Cannes and the Venice Film Festival, but they were never far from controversy. Pasolini's attitude that life is holy and that sexual and other humble activities of daily life are sacred rather than immoral constantly pitted him against the institutional morality of church and government. He was an ardent opponent of consumerism and globalization, especially because of the way in which these economic forces contributed to the disappearance of regional autonomies. His films never shrank from portraying the facts of life realistically, imaging nudity, sexuality, and violence in stark, unromanticized terms. He also never hid his homosexuality.

Pasolini was murdered in Ostia, Italy, on November 2, 1975, his body run over repeatedly by a car. Although a young hustler was arrested, he later recanted his confession. The mystery has never been solved.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Pasolini, Pier Paolo. 2006. Pasolini and Death: Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1922–1975; Life-Work-Myth, ed. Bernhard Schwenk and Michael Semff. Ostfildern, Germany: Hatje Cantz.

Rohdie, Sam. 1995. The Passion of Pier Paolo Pasolini. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Rumble, Patrick, and Bart Testa, eds. 1994. Pier Paolo Pasolini: Contemporary Perspectives. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

                                                  Judith Roof