Pier Paolo Pasolini
Il Decameron

Hello guys, coming back from my short vacation, today I wanted to talk to you about the medieval erotic genre, or rather, "decamerotic", which spread in Italy starting from the early 70s with titles of not little importance. However, reflecting on the roots of these films and their illustrious antecedents, I had a bit of an epiphany, and I felt it useful to focus, for you, on Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975) and particularly on his film "The Decameron" ('71), which we will discuss following this.

I confess that, as a lover of popular culture, I have always looked at PPP with a lot of respect and attention, even though some of his stances leave me quite perplexed. Let me explain: his entire attack on development, on urbanization, and the loss of contact of the subproletariat with its agricultural and pastoral roots, on current morals, as well as on "eternal fascism" (about which you can read in "Lutheran Letters"), denotes a belligerent and intellectual temperament, but, at the same time, a sort of underlying psychological weakness: almost as if good old PPP was indeed attacking the ideas and contemporary Italy (even today's, after all, our contemporary), but, equally, was staging a public parricide and a self-analysis: he, the son of the upper bourgeoisie and a father who was an army officer closely connected with the Regime (Carlo Alberto Pasolini); he, fond of the postcard-perfect farming world as seen in tourist spots - unaware of the harsh life of the peasants as better known to an Olmi -; he, who praised the subproletariat and set himself up as an educator in the pages of "Gennariello", yet also cruised for "young boys" on the outskirts of the capital driving his latest-model car.

In short, a split personality to be psychoanalyzed, perhaps somewhat mythologized due to his tragic martyrdom.

You may be wondering why the good old Il_Paolo has given you this whole panegyric as an introduction to the film we are reviewing today: because in PPP's ambiguous biography, we can also find the explanation of his cinema, as it is thesis-driven cinema, always dedicated to demonstrating something, specifically PPP’s ideas about sex and its commodification.

And "The Decameron" is exactly a cleverly ambiguous film, and perhaps, a bit hypocritical, like its director.

Loosely based on Boccaccio's tales (but the action takes place in Naples) and depicted in an extremely raw and deliberately vulgar manner, without compromises and mediations, the film portrays the protagonists’ free sexuality, devoid of superstructures and playful, as a reaction to death, degeneration, and, by extension, to cultural massification, to that "fascist" idea that would want us all uniform and aligned with the collectivity. The vitality of bodies, nudity, thus appears, on one hand, as the individual's return to the primordial state and uncorrupted nature, and, on the other, as a silent form of revolution against everything that represents current morals, conventional thinking, conformity to a model that ultimately reveals itself as a form of hypocrisy.

However, it should also be noted, especially in light of a more complete view of PPP's work, how behind this free sexuality, not by chance metaphorically echoing the post-'68 spirit and the liberation of customs, the Bolognese-born director had also sensed something else, namely the risk of a new form of "reaction". That is: if, initially, the affirmation of the individual as a free being, sexually as well, can lead to a true palingenesis, the risk is that the same sexual choices become massified, turning them into a fashion, a trend, and thus the expression of an indistinct collectivity: the ultimate results of this perspective lie in the very idea of pornography, that is, the trading of bodies, reduced to consumer goods, to real meat for the market, as PPP would clearly elucidate in the subsequent "Salò".

Sex as liberation, but poorly governed liberation as a prelude to a new restoration, through the very commodification of bodies, appears to be what PPP is telling us by moralizing (even if he had practiced what he preached, it would have been better, even for him, poor guy).

In this regard, we could ask whether the "decamerotic" genre, which took its cue from this film, vulgarizing its message and reducing it to the aesthetic of "the nude", might have confirmed the theses emerging in embryonic form from PPP's work. These theses are even better confirmed if we consider how illustrious "decamerotic" actresses - the first among them, the German Karin Schubert - in the 80s, went the final path of hardcore cinema, which in its soft implications constitutes another great strand of our cinema, at least in the 80s (think of Brass and his followers).

From a technical point of view, the film is rather interesting, both for the choice of an unmediated representation and for PPP's usual preference for non-professional actors (except for the appearances of Citti, Davoli, the legendary Angela Luce, and the great Silvana Mangano), although I don't consider our director to be a true filmmaker, but rather an author and a writer who used the camera as an extension of the word. But those are just opinions, let it be clear.

In summary, lovers of Culture with a capital "C" can watch this film to delight in the thoughts of one of the greatest intellectual fetishes of the late 20th century (especially after his Death and the proliferation of unaware students and unaware grandkids), while fans - like me - of old and simple Italian cinema can well understand how behind certain genre cinema, there is also intellectual speculation, and also "er dibbbattito".

So: 3/5 on the DeBaser scale and 2/5 for lovers of the "decamerotic"; some good nudity can be seen here too, but it's too watered down in the broth of Culture.

Yours Populartly

Il_Paolo