Enzo Biagi
Intervista a Pier Paolo Pasolini (1971)

Amidst all the vile and useless rubbish found on YouTube, it's a pleasant surprise to occasionally find something truly special there.

I discovered this very unique interview, an interview conducted by Enzo Biagi with Pier Paolo Pasolini back in 1971.

Now, Pasolini, as everyone knows, is a secular icon, a saint venerated by the community of rebels, whether out of boredom or conviction, differently integrated into consumer society, and not just that.

Everyone cites him, much like Fabrizio De Andre’, another secular saint of the modern era.

There are even heated verbal brawls about the interpretation of his thoughts.

This interview, however, shows a Pasolini who is light-years away from that sacred figure of a guiding spirit of dissident culture and “against the grain” direction, a label he was involuntarily given by the world of culture after his death, perhaps to keep him at a safe distance and prevent further trouble.

Of course, his thoughts are recognizable even in this interview.

But it is the context of the interview that makes his thoughts “more human,” less emphatic, sometimes didactic, less certain, and therefore more “fragile.”

A context composed of a group of his former high school classmates and one of his teachers.

There are many truly beautiful aspects in this “interview” (apart from the fact that the interviewer is the great and much-missed Enzo Biagi):

1. The modest and bored presence of PPP and his reaction to the words and stories of his classmates
2. The sincere affection and admiration of his reunited schoolmates, combined with the candor with which some of them challenge his ideas and express doubts about his artistic work
3. The awkward way in which Pasolini sometimes responds to their objections, the candid way in which he admits possible flaws in his beliefs and ideas
4. The sincerity with which PPP talks about his traumas, his (overcome) fear of death, his complete pessimism, and how he expresses his feelings towards his father.

The whole is capable of providing a perfect testimony and exegesis of the contradictions that he was proudly proud of, which are at the base of his thoughts and his literary and cinematic works.

Compared to modern television, where intimate facts are sold to an audience eager to forget themselves, whether out of boredom or necessity, this interview, never aired while Pasolini was alive, represents a kind of forgotten forebear.

And it's terrible to hear Pasolini, in front of his classmates and teacher who are entirely pleased with the opportunity, questioning his own participation in the program, partly due to poorly concealed ideological stance and partly due to real detachment, a sentiment he seems to demonstrate throughout the course of the interview.

Almost as if he had foresight, once again, and sensed what we would become.

Highly recommended viewing, both for fans and those simply seeking to know him better.