Pier Paolo Pasolini
Uccellacci e Uccellini

Totò was like that. He was an old-fashioned man. When, in the summer of 1965, Pasolini showed up at the Prince's house, along with his lifelong friend Ninetto Davoli, Totò looked at them with a frown. Monarchist, with strong principles, old-fashioned mentality (in the full swing of the 1960s, on the brink of revolution, he still believed in the values of family, religion, state, and morality), Totò couldn't stand that intellectual air, furthermore leftist, typically Pasolinian, and Davoli's torn jeans. Pasolini talks to him about a still undefined project in which Totò should take part as the main actor. Few words, some glances, and a lot of perplexity. When Totò dismisses his guests, in the elegant house in Parioli, he orders his wife Franca Faldini to hand him a can of Flit immediately. He couldn't stand those two anarchists and wanted to disinfect the house from their nauseating (for him) scent.

Totò had acted for a lifetime without a script, exploiting his unstoppable acting verve. In 1956, following a strenuous theatrical tour (largely improvised), a pain in his eyes hit him. Already half-blind in one eye (due to the very difficult production of "Totò a colori," 1952, the first Italian color film), he lost his sight completely. Not completely blind, he managed to perceive some shadows, distinguish the movements of the people around him, slowly reaching the complete loss of sight. In 1965, when he met Pasolini, he could hardly see anything anymore. When he agreed to work with the director for that project he understood very little about, he no longer even saw shadows.

The project saw the light around the early months of 1966, and had a name: "Uccellacci e uccellini" (“Hawks and Sparrows”). Pasolini treated Totò like a child, followed his every movement, had him record most of the film directly on set (dubbing was prohibitive, given Totò's critical health conditions), and told him step by step what he had to do. It wasn't the first serious film Totò participated in (considering him only a comedian is, even today, a serious historical mistake), there was already a precedent, in 1963 with the little-known "Il comandante." But perhaps this was the first real serious film he took part in, the one that launched him onto the international scene (at the age of 68, after a hundred films of absolute greatness) and would earn him respectable satisfactions, like the Palme d'Or won at Cannes.

"Uccellacci e uccellini" is a philosophical film, perhaps too much, but of great intellectual and political sharpness. Starting from the purely Pasolinian assumption that the sub-proletariat is a rib of the proletariat, the film unfolds on multiple levels, the intellectual-political, the fairytale-real, and the critical-social. Totò and Ninetto Davoli are two poor souls (father and son) who, openly discussing Life and Death, quietly walk through the "lost roads" (Lynch has nothing to do with it) of the most desolate Roman suburbs. Which is then the suburb of the world. They are joined by a pompous, conceited crow that tells them the exploits of Friar Ciccillo and Friar Ninetto forced by Saint Francis to convert hawks and sparrows (that is, hawks and sparrows). Totò and Ninetto Davoli in friar attire are priceless, able to express emotions and feelings only through facial expressions. Then it returns to the present, with Totò-Pasolini's anarchy going to defecate in the fields, enjoying a prostitute (immediately imitated by the son), and attending Togliatti's funeral. The journey resumes. But the crow still talks. Father and son, tired of the crow's preachings, decide to eat it.

This disturbing Pasolinian tale overflows with pessimism, and it is the pessimism of an intellectual tired of his times and the world, evidently disappointed by certain politics and certain class struggles. The crow, an emblematic bearer of a more human than divine salvation, is not listened to and is killed. Just as the will of the people (which perhaps has never existed) to rebel against the established power is killed, also and above all the fault of a left inert in front of proletariat problems, closer to certain power games than to the real support of the common citizen. The role of the intellectual is zero, it is the role of a needle in a haystack, and then the direct, fierce attack on the role of the Church, trapped between its Christian duties and its absolute inability to understand what happens outside the Palaces of Power. The episode of the two friars is emblematic. The role of the Church is that of an anonymous "orderly" of laws that nevertheless does not understand that those very orders, those imposed laws, can never materialize because the disconnection that exists (today as yesterday) between society and the Church is enormous, almost impossible to bridge.

The future is very dark, a third world situation, between garbage, humanity falling apart, and cultural decay. Too much pessimism? Perhaps, but everyone can interpret it as they wish: thesis a) Pasolini was right, today we live in a corrupt, greedy world, incapable of providing answers to the weaker parts of the country, even though we are among the most industrialized nations, we are in the deepest mess because a state that fails to guarantee a future for the next generations (and even for those of today) is revolting; thesis b) Pasolini aimed completely wrong, today all things considered we live well, we all own a house and a bank account, we have all the comforts of the world and we can go on vacation two or three times a year. Both theses are respectable. Or perhaps a crow is still needed to try to open our eyes to the reality of things? And if then, after a while, we do the same thing Totò and Davoli did, kill it and eat it? Is the world ready for the revolution? Today I don't know, but Pasolini, in 1966, opted for no.
After "Uccellacci e uccellini" Totò and Pasolini became friends. Or rather, Totò became friends with Pasolini, since the director had always been a friend towards the Prince. His being gay (almost a mortal sin for the very classic Christian upbringing Totò had from a very young age), his being leftist, or rather Marxist, his being close-knit with the sub-proletariat of the Roman neighborhoods, all that being so far from Totò's upper-class circles, over time, became for the Prince a new discovery of life, a new way of conceiving reality before leaving Planet Earth, at 69, in 1967, after only two intense years of collaboration with Pasolini (with whom he would shoot some episodes of "Le streghe," and the fundamental "What Are the Clouds?" within the collective film "The Witches").

And yet, in the early days when they worked together, Totò often rebuked Pasolini, guilty of having him shoot the same scene five or six times. Totò was used to shooting a single scene, always good on the first take, but behind the camera, there were honest craftsmen of the Seventh Art like Camillo Mastrocinque or Mario Mattòli, not the artistic genius of Pier Paolo Pasolini. Indeed, some journalists who interviewed him during the filming of "Uccellacci e uccellini," Totò said that undoubtedly Pasolini was a genius, that the film would undoubtedly be a masterpiece, but that he understood nothing of either the screenplay or the story itself. Despite the initial diffidence, Totò, though not understanding the plot, decided to give his mind and body to the Pasolinian cause.

Once again, as always, he was right.