Pier Paolo Pasolini

Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922 - 1975) was an Italian motion-picture director, poet, and novelist, noted for his socially critical, stylistically unorthodox films. He attended the University of Bologna, studying art history and literature. His poverty-stricken existence in Rome during the 1950s furnished the material for his first two novels, The Ragazzi (1955) and A Violent Life (1959). These brutally realistic depictions of the poverty and squalor of slum life in Rome were similar in character to his first film, Accattone (1961). One of Pasolini’s best known film The Gospel According to Saint Matthew (1964) is an austere, documentary-style retelling of the life and martyrdom of Jesus Christ. The comic allegory The Hawks and the Sparrows (1966) was followed by two films attempting to re-create ancient myths from a contemporary viewpoint, Oedipus Rex (1967) and Medea (1969). Pasolini’s use of eroticism, violence and depravity as vehicles for his political and religious speculations in such films as Theorem (1968) and Pigsty (1969) brought him into conflict with conservative elements of the Roman Catholic Church. He then ventured into medieval eroticism with Il Decamerone (1971) and The Canterbury Tales (1972). Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975) his latest film, mixing libertinism and Nazism, causes scandal. In addition to his motion pictures, Pasolini published numerous volumes of poetry and several works of literary criticism. One night of November 1975, he was found dead on the beach at Ostia, near Rome, in conditions that remain unclear.