• One of the strongest debut films this side of The 400 Blows or Breathless– Pier Paolo Pasolini arrives with Accattone at nearly the age of 40—and it is a fully realized mature work of art
  • Before we get the first image the tone is set, there’s a passage from Dante—letting us know about the 20th century version of Hell (in this case Rome in the early 1960’s) we are about to visit. Also, Pasolini uses Bach’s sacred “St. Matthew’s Passion” for the score. If you recognize it, Scorsese also uses it (and Pasolini’s take on it) in the opening of Casino. The score is beautiful in it of itself, but there’s more than that– Pasolini is undercutting life’s loveliness and the religious nature of the music here- he’ll drop it in at opportune times (including a long fight on the street as Franco Citti’s titular character fights like a dog)
  • It isn’t just a triumph for Pasolini—Franco Citti is incredible as Accattone or Vittorio. Citti is in every scene of the film. This is not the suit-wearing suave Marcello Mastroianni characters from Fellini or the affluent ennui of Antonioni in the early 1960’s Italian cinema. Accattone is rough, gambling, spitting—he has an edge. He’s a pimp, wearing a chain and the trademark white sweater. If the backdrop (poverty level characters with dilapidated buildings in Rome) reminds you of De Sica and Rossellini – the characters in this world are closer to Bunuel. Accattone is no victim. He’s complex, rotten in many ways and he hawks his women. He will be scowling one minute, singing the next and then luring women in like the Honest John Fox character in Pinocchio.

the backdrop (poverty level characters with dilapidated buildings in Rome) harkens back to De Sica and Rossellini

  • The film is plotless, he’s really just struggling to survive in the outskirts of Rome—walking around to Bach- a world of pimps, thieves, prostitutes, the family he lost/left. I think a contemporary comparison is Uncut Gems from the Safdie brothers
  • First work in cinema for Bertolucci- he’s an assistant director
  • There are no easy political answers as to what caused Accattone as a character or this hell he’s living in
  • I think you can relate it to Italian neorealism for the backdrop as I mentioned, but it is closer to Visconti’s use of neorealism (Ossessione, La Terra Trema) or Bunuel’s (Los Olvidados) than Rossellini or De Sica (often innocent children/men of circumstance). Bunuel, Pasolini, and Visconti almost visit neorealism like a genre and then work off that
  • Like Bunuel’s Viridana (same year, 1961) the religious connections and critiques are unmissable as a parable and Accattone as a sort of Christ figure. The “Last supper” the film sort of opens with. In the text we get “not even Christ himself” “angels” “all hope abandon”- praying, and quoting scripture throughout the text by multiple characters (this is not how people talk naturally) and then prophetic death (Accattone rises from the dead so to speak with the dive off the bridge at the beginning of the film, lives three days, and dies again)—the best frames in the film are the two with religious imagery and icons looking over Accattone—the single best at 69 minutes as he tries to turn the poor innocent Stella into a prostitute- because of Pasolini’s framing the icon is right above Citti’s right shoulder. Pasolini holds the characters here for a long time specifically

the best frames in the film are the two with religious imagery and icons looking over Accattone– here, early in the film after the sort of “last supper”- Accattone jumps off the bridge (a bet on whether he’d die or not), he comes up, and would die for real three days (roughly) later

the single best at 69 minutes as he tries to turn the poor innocent Stella into a prostitute- because of Pasolini’s framing the icon is right above Citti’s right shoulder– Pasolini holds the characters here for a long time specifically

  • Great formal touch having twin tracking shots on a long road. First Accattone is stalking his wife (or ex-wife) at the 45 minute mark—the camera is peddling backwards as he hawks her and fights with her. The road and world is dirt and trash– “the world is a big garbage dump”. At 82 min we get the same shot—retracing the steps but instead of his wife it is Stella this time

Great formal touch having twin tracking shots on a long road. First Accattone is stalking his wife (or ex-wife) at the 45 minute mark—the camera is peddling backwards as he hawks her and fights with her.

At 82 min we get the same shot—retracing the steps but instead of his wife it is Stella this time

  • At 65 minutes Accattone is looking through the hole in the rubble/bricks at his former house
  • Complex character- slowing sipping a beer as he watches a man dance with Stella (he’s like half jealous, half happy (he’s her pimp even if she doesn’t know it yet) and half conflicted knowing he’s doing wrong)—that’s three halves—I know– haha. He does try to reform. Goes to work- we get him referring to Buchenwald (Pasolini is always erudite)
  • At 102 minutes the surrealism sequence- his own death- he’s now clean cut and in a suit, hair combed—locked out of the gates

At 102 minutes the surrealism sequence- his own death- he’s now clean cut and in a suit, hair combed—locked out of the gates

  • Near the end of the film, 8-10 times Pasolini cuts to an extreme close-up – the eyes of a man, an angel perhaps, watching Accattone turn to stealing— Rififi in the text—also hard not to think of Bicycle Thieves
  • The haunting “now I’m fine” ending
  • sort of on the border of the masterpiece line– a devastating film