{"id":11387,"date":"2016-09-20T21:00:44","date_gmt":"2016-09-21T02:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=11387"},"modified":"2016-09-20T16:50:10","modified_gmt":"2016-09-20T21:50:10","slug":"the-decameron-1971-pier-paolo-pasolini","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/11387","title":{"rendered":"The Decameron (1971, Pier Paolo Pasolini)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I guess I&#8217;m starting to get Pasolini&#8217;s style, thanks not to this confusing movie but to the blu-ray extras, which say he combines his knowledge of art and iconography with deliberately naive framing and ignorance of film history and style, influenced by Gramsci (&#8220;the revolutionary potential of the arts&#8221;) and the neorealists (who insisted on a &#8220;high level of political and cultural engagement on the part of directors and writers&#8221;).  In retrospect I can see how these ideas work, but in my experience of watching the movie, it seemed like a silly bunch of populist, amoral comedic sex stories, lightly enjoyable.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image16\/decameron4.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p>First, someone is murdered in a cave, but it&#8217;s dark and I&#8217;m not sure what&#8217;s happening or if it&#8217;s important.<\/p>\n<p>Then Andreuccio (Ninetto Davoli) is scammed by a princess who claims to be his long-lost sister before ejecting him into a toilet and stealing his money.  He finds fortune with grave robbers later that night, stealing a gemstone ring from a bishop&#8217;s crypt.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image16\/decameron1.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image16\/decameron3.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p>Masetto pretends to be stupid and mute in order to gain favor with the nuns and eventually have sex with all of them.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image16\/decameron2.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p>A husband returns home to his cheating wife Peronella where she has stashed her lover in a huge vase, pretending that he&#8217;s interesting in buying it.  This is when I realized that none of these episodes are related in any way.<\/p>\n<p>Legendary liar\/forger Ciappelletto (Franco Citti, title star of <em>Accattone<\/em> &#8211; aha, learned that he&#8217;s the murderer in the prologue) is dying, gives a final fake confession to a very impressed priest.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image16\/decameron5.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p>A multi-part episode framed by the story of a painter (Pasolini himself) working on a mural&#8230; also featuring young lovers Caterina and Ricardo caught nude on a balcony and forced to marry&#8230; Lorenzo is killed by his lover&#8217;s brothers and she finds his grave and keeps his head&#8230; and a sex fiend returns from the dead to tell his buddy that the afterlife has &#8220;nothing against screwing around&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image16\/decameron6.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p>Back to the painter: &#8220;Why complete a work, when it&#8217;s so beautiful just to dream it?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image16\/decameron8.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p>Won a prize in Berlin (despite featuring some of the laziest dubbing work I&#8217;ve ever seen) where Vittorio De Sica took the Golden Bear.  &#8220;It also quite infamously started a trend of pornographic films based on Boccaccio&#8217;s <em>Decameron<\/em>, something Pasolini actually found very upsetting,&#8221; per Patrick Rumble&#8217;s vital video essay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I guess I&#8217;m starting to get Pasolini&#8217;s style, thanks not to this confusing movie but to the blu-ray extras, which say he combines his knowledge of art and iconography with deliberately naive framing and ignorance of film history and style, influenced by Gramsci (&#8220;the revolutionary potential of the arts&#8221;) and the neorealists (who insisted on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[400,532,332,302,1959],"class_list":["post-11387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-1970s","tag-anthology-film","tag-nuns","tag-painting","tag-pier-pasolini"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11387"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11396,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11387\/revisions\/11396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}