|
Antique texts for the modernist, always a matter of interpretation: "Folks, let me tell this the Neapolitan way." Pier Paolo Pasolini announces a Trilogy of Life and naturally inaugurates it with a murder, so it goes with Boccaccio's larks in the age of pestilence, merry and scabrous reversals in a fresh and continuous flow. Sham relations and grave-robbers beset the young lord (Ninetto Davoli) in the first tale, a ruby ring is the reward from vat of shit to sacramental crypt. The erect cock in the cloistered hen house (cf. Siegel's The Beguiled the same year), workers and institutions like a mute stud with horny nuns, the miracle gets Sister Superior's bells ringing. A wife's screeching and a cuckold's jackass guffaws make for a rollicking duet, elsewhere the inveterate brute (Franco Citti) with a long line of sins ("...even a bit queer") serves up a phony confession and gets elevated to sainthood. Bruegel at the fair, later Pasolini himself as Giotto's pupil, the artist as gruff imagesmith. (Silvana Mangano in Madonna robes topped by paper-plate halo is surely what inspiration looks like when it hits you after hours.) Zeffirelli juveniles on the terrace (they sleep beatifically, her hand on his member) are no tragedy but rather a good deal for greedy parents, no such luck for the maiden who's left with her lover's severed noggin in a basil flower pot. Radiant sunshine and toothless grins, the Ovidian transformation is there just so the seedy friar can get some tail. Finally, a bit of good news from the afterlife for chaste medieval jocks everywhere: "Here we have nothing against screwing around!" The coda takes reflexive note of Fellini Satyricon, with the painter-auteur contemplating the open-ended mise en scène of his unfinished fresco. "Why create a work when it's so beautiful to just dream it?" Cinematography by Tonino Delli Colli.
--- Fernando F. Croce |