Pier Paolo Pasolini
Accattone

"The world belongs to those who have teeth." 

Vittorio closes his eyes, subdued and freed from his tragic fate, fleeing from daily miseries and demons. Fleeing from the grim reality of the 'excluded', wounded and ignored by society and bourgeois ethics. Fleeing one last time, Vittorio Cataldi. And that desperate motorcycle ride, the umpteenth attempt to feel finally 'free' from the chains of inhuman rage; from that disdainful label of Accattone that defines an outcast, a vital carcass unescaped like you. Or more simply a 'discard', a number 0 of repressed and abandoned humanity: a miserable 'pimp' undeserving of compassionate glances, expecting no caresses and pity from others who judge based on their own 'moral' code. The 'others', the pseudo-bourgeoisie blind and sterilized by a hypocritical social well-being, for whom you remain an inconvenient anomaly. The 'official' Italy washes its dirty laundry in-house. Rather, it prefers to leave it like this: stinking, filthy on the dirty floor of a shack beyond time, on the outskirts of pre-industrial outskirts. The same Roman outskirts, a crumbling black-and-white landscape, in an 'impressionist' vein, of the intertwined stories of the 'marginalized' protagonists of the film: almost all non-professional actors, chosen by Pasolini in the very places where Accattone's story is set. A poetic transfiguration of a distressing neo-realism because it's so close to us? A harsh and disturbing sociological inquiry? The same writer and director born in Bologna, in a famous column in the Corsera, considered it nothing more than 'a laboratory sampling'; conducted on Italian society at the dawn of the Sixties, during the Great Economic Boom... But a society that was already disappearing, self-devouring, into the ruling class and 'its' underclass. The petty bourgeois replacing the driving force, the ideals of the youth world. The way of speaking and relating changes. Habits change, the lifestyle model changes.

"When I set my mind on something, it must be that! Either the world kills me, or I kill it."

Pier Paolo Pasolini stubbornly managed, with a young Bertolucci as assistant director, to complete the creation of his cinema debut in July 1961. The poet\scriptwriter, already 39 at the time, endured enormous pressures and vile ostracism from public opinion and the then Minister of Tourism and Entertainment; for the themes dealt with in 'Accattone', regarding the degradation of the outskirts and exploitation of prostitution, came close to the lynching of the work, resulting in it being banned for those under eighteen. The first in the history of Italian cinema, even with a specific decree. This was the 'little Italy' of those days, a matron somewhat whorish who often preferred to hide the dirt under the carpet. In the parliamentary halls, the so-called 'representatives of the people' blathered indignantly and excitedly. In newspapers and dailies, scribblers thinly veiled hypocritical disgust, with articles inviting boycott with extraordinary malice: and both these 'categories' trained the self-satisfied and 'ignorant' masses in the rejection of diversity. Of an almost 'pornographic' representation of prostitutes, pimps, thieves, and small criminals unsustainable for the mediocre Italian 'respectability' of the early '60s. The human solidarity that Pasolini seemed to want to manifest in the film towards that 'invisible' universe of despair was unacceptable to the dull eyes of a doubly victimizing bourgeoisie. The same society that allowed the writer Pasolini to debut as a director could not tolerate, in that privileged position, a "bourgeois" intellectual free of any moralistic scruples: Pier Paolo showed what the 'good people' tended to exclude. The life of the last. The passion of the marginalized, unworthy of public absolution. Children and slaves of a pre-bourgeois misery, derelicts removed from social consciousness for centuries and condemned to eternal purgatory. A Sodom and Gomorrah, an ideal theater and comfortable screen for the skilled Sunday flagellators. The 'others', those with the moral code of "healthy values"; where the prevailing institutions have coercive instruments at their disposal, such as social exclusion, perpetrated 'scandal', prison... The ritual necessity of judging a world outside of such codes, to preserve the ethics of power. It is easy to understand the scope of Pasolini's provocation in 'Accattone', and aimed at the Italian bourgeois world - which he himself liked to define as "the most ignorant in Europe". The film was presented in Venice, just finished editing, and although lacking the permit for theaters was screened out of competition at the Festival on August 31, '61, sparking enormous and laughable controversies. In Paris, during the first screening, the critique was enthusiastic and unanimous. PPP finally managed to reform his role as a modern intellectual, to confront the camera: that is, what in those years was 'the' mass communication medium. And challenge bourgeois ethics on its turf, to show its cracks and contradictions. Ten years had passed since Pasolini arrived in Rome with his mother Susanna Colussi, and nearly a decade separated him from his first encounters with the Roman film environment.

"Are you still not dead? Yet they told me that work kills people!"

Vittorio Cataldi (a great, intense Franco Citti), called Accattone, has a rage inside that devours him. He is a tormented soul among the ruins of a decomposed and abandoned periphery. A landscape that has no name, no precise place, no known times: a physical and psychological gaze that investigates poor souls like Accattone. An exploiter, a miserable 'pimp' maintained by Maddalena; the woman who works the street and will end up in jail for false testimony, the woman willing to do anything to 'save' the man she loves. Accattone who lives in a dilapidated shack together with Nannina and offspring, wife of that Ciccio denounced and sent to bars to take his place and 'job'. But the punitive expedition of the Neapolitan delinquent's companions will not delay, and Maddalena will suffer the consequences... Accattone and his bar buddies, proud of not working. Proud of scraping by, amidst cunning and boasting. Accattone who had a wife and a child. Ascenza, with a starvation wage, doesn't want to see you. Rightfully so. And what do you do? You fall in love with Stella, a poor and naive girl who works with Ascenza in a recycling workshop. But your weak intentions of change clash with your 'cunning', petty instinct. The golden chain stolen from your little son to buy shoes and a dress for Stella, unaware that you want to send her to prostitute herself like Maddalena. The job at a blacksmith, asked by your brother Sabino, and then immediately renounced. The bitter taste of manual labor, the fierce judgment of old idle friends, and it all ends as if the idea of a 'normal' life had only the taste of a dream. The omen of a written destiny, an abysmal depression that has the dreamlike boundaries of one's own funeral. Relegated like a shadow to the corner, a passive and sad figure unable even to choose one's own grave. Resigned and torn, there's nothing left but to accept Balilla's offer and return to petty thefts. The little truck of cold cuts, and the police sirens arriving. The motorcycle escape, but it's a brief illusion. Like others, Vittorio. The fatal accident, the blood runs down your face on the dark pavement. The notes of Bach's 'Passion of St. Matthew' accompany your drama. Now you can close your eyes, dear Vittorio. And leave 'Accattone' at the crossroads of that road, in the lifeless body in front of the rescuers. Peace takes you far away, Vittorio. Far from torment, free from this bleak and diseased world: "Ah, now I'm fine."

"And yet hunger is what? A vice! It's all an impression! Ah, if only they hadn't accustomed us to eating as kids..."