Celebrity Biographies
Pier Paolo Pasolini
The centenary of Pier Paolo Pasolini, writer and poet, revolutionary and controversial filmmaker, author of a deeply personal work, weighs heavily on the terrible circumstances of his savage murder, never fully clarified.
Pier Paolo Pasolini was born in Bologna in 1922, his father Carlo Alberto was an army lieutenant, his mother Susanna a schoolteacher. He had a younger brother, Guidalberto, who also died prematurely, during World War II, in an ambush by partisans.
Already as a child he loved literature, and his first publications of poems date from 1939, while he was studying at the University of Bologna. His formation coincides with a convulsive moment in world history, with the rise of fascism and the outbreak of war, times in which he maintains his intellectual and literary concerns. Known for his homosexuality, in politics he ended up leaning towards Marxism and communism, although in a very heterodox way. In any case, he was a nonconformist who was very critical of the established order.
His first steps in the cinema date back to 1954, when he participated in writing the script for La chica del río ; then other librettos follow, such as the one for Las noches de Cabiria by Federico Fellini . Thus, in 1961 he made his directorial debut, with postulates close to neorealism but with a personal stamp that heralded a new Italian cinema: Accattone offered a look at the marginality starring one of his fetish actors, Franco Citti . In later works he has prestigious actors such as Anna Magnani in her look at motherhood in Mamma Roma (1962), and Totò in Pajaritos y pajarracos (1966). Due to his ideas, he surprised with The Gospel According to Saint Matthew (1964), which addresses the life of Jesus using the literalness of the words of the Holy Scripture, with a sober tone and great respect, and opting for actors of appearance popular.
On two occasions he takes classic Greek texts to adapt them to the screen, Oedipus Rex (1967) and Medea (1969), the latter starring Maria Callas. The decade of the 70s supposes a change, also stylistic, that is noticeable in the so-called Trilogy of Life, made up of The Decameron (1971), The Canterbury Tales (1972) and The Thousand and One Nights (1974), and especially all because of the film that closes his filmography, Saló or the 120 days of Sodoma (1975), inspired by the Marquis de Sade, and which scandalizes due to the crudeness of its quasi-pornographic images.
His tragic murder surrounded by lurid details –a brutal beating, run over, burning his corpse, to which was added the confession of the culprit, his conviction and his subsequent retraction–, contributed to fuel conspiracy theories, giving him an aura of a cursed and controversial filmmaker, although of undeniable artistic talent.