06-11-2020, 08:29 AM
Pasolini's films Decameron (1971), The Canterbury Tales (1972), and Arabian Nights (1974) are collectively known as his "Trilogy of Life." They are Felliniesque in their use of everyday people, large and small, fat and thin, homely to beautiful to grotesque. Never have I seen such a landscape of bad teeth (and not make-up).
All are of course period pieces, with fantastic sets from the sumptuous to the full-on ghetto. All are omnibuses of short tales, often perverse or sacrilegious in nature. Pasolini was intensely controversial, with extreme views on politics, religion, education, and all else. But he was brilliant -- an actor, director, journalist, novelist, playwright... Anyway, he made enemies in almost every camp. At age 53, shortly after the release of his Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom, he was brutally murdered. But that's another review (which I might not do).
All three films are enjoyable. The stories tend to be overly simplistic, but are brought vividly to life and are fascinating to watch. How much did all those sets cost?
There is one actor who appears in two of these films that impressed the hell out of me. In Decameron he plays a painter commissioned to paint a fresco on a church wall. I've never seen such a convincing portrayal of an artist before, how the moment he sees the blank space of wall he's been assigned, he becomes totally fixated on it, and immerses himself in studying people and things for ideas of what he'll put there, and then the obsessive way he paints. This same actor appears in Canterbury Tales, this time as Chaucer himself, seen now and then as a sort of framing device, thinking up the tales you are seeing and putting them to quill; and he expresses such a sly orneriness in composing his biting commentaries on religion and society. This actor, by the way, bares a striking resemblance to Willem Dafoe -- with maybe a more robust bone structure.
Only later, when looking up these films, did I discover that that actor was Pasolini himself.
What an amazing talent.
All are of course period pieces, with fantastic sets from the sumptuous to the full-on ghetto. All are omnibuses of short tales, often perverse or sacrilegious in nature. Pasolini was intensely controversial, with extreme views on politics, religion, education, and all else. But he was brilliant -- an actor, director, journalist, novelist, playwright... Anyway, he made enemies in almost every camp. At age 53, shortly after the release of his Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom, he was brutally murdered. But that's another review (which I might not do).
All three films are enjoyable. The stories tend to be overly simplistic, but are brought vividly to life and are fascinating to watch. How much did all those sets cost?
There is one actor who appears in two of these films that impressed the hell out of me. In Decameron he plays a painter commissioned to paint a fresco on a church wall. I've never seen such a convincing portrayal of an artist before, how the moment he sees the blank space of wall he's been assigned, he becomes totally fixated on it, and immerses himself in studying people and things for ideas of what he'll put there, and then the obsessive way he paints. This same actor appears in Canterbury Tales, this time as Chaucer himself, seen now and then as a sort of framing device, thinking up the tales you are seeing and putting them to quill; and he expresses such a sly orneriness in composing his biting commentaries on religion and society. This actor, by the way, bares a striking resemblance to Willem Dafoe -- with maybe a more robust bone structure.
Only later, when looking up these films, did I discover that that actor was Pasolini himself.
What an amazing talent.