Accattone

EN

“Pier Paolo Pasolini's first film, Accattone (1961), is the tale of a petty thief and pimp. In terms of its subject matter (the representation of contemporary life among the urban poor - specifically the Roman subproletariat) and its mode of production (the use of location shooting and nonprofessional actors), Accattone seems a continuation of the Italian neo-realist tradition. Yet Pasolini conceived of Accattone as a reaction against neo-realism. In opposition to that tradition, Pasolini attempted to create a realistic cinema imbued with an epic and mythological reverence for life as suggested by his term sacrale.”1

“The destabilization of mimetic acting is reinforced by a deliberate refusal of preparation, emotional or otherwise, in the actors. Like Fellini, and in another neo-realist calque turned against naturalist ends, Pasolini would instruct actors only while shooting was in progress, producing an unnatural spontaneity out of tune with situational realism. The first scene of Accattone is a striking example of this method, showing a series of forcedly laughing faces which mock and disturb the viewer as well as Accattone, complementing the oppressive sunlight which dominates the landscape, as it will throughout the film. In a 1965 interview, Pasolini explained how in order to achieve a suitable alienating effect of this kind he would feed a line to an actor (‘buongiorno’, ‘hello’), and later dub it with something quite different (‘ti odio’, ‘I hate you’).”

R.S.C. Gordon2

Oswald Stack: You have said that the fact that you made Accattone during the Tambroni government influenced the way you ended the film – what did you mean?

Pier Poalo Pasolini: The Tambroni government did not influence the film. I knew and cared nothing about Tambroni, who was a complete nonentity and could therefore not possibly have the slightest influence on me. What I meant was that Accattone was a film that could emerge in Italy at a certain cultural moment – i.e. when neo-realism was dead. Neo-realism was the expression in the cinema of the Resistance, of the rediscovery of Italy, with all our hopes for a new kind of society. This lasted until the late fifties. After that neorealism died because Italy changed: the establishment reconsolidated its position on petit bourgeois and clerical bases. So I said that Accattone is what it is (apart from the fact that it is what it is because I am made the way I am) for external cultural reasons – by which I meant not just the Tambroni episode, but the whole re-establishment of officialdom and hypocrisy. The Italian bourgeoisie had closed one cultural period, the age of neo-realism.

Oswald Stack in conversation with Pier Paolo Pasolini3

• 1Christopher Orr, ‘Pasolini’s Accattone, or Naturalism and Its Discontents’, Film Criticism 19, no. 3 (1995): 54–66.
• 2R.S.C. Gordon, Pasolini: Forms of Subjectivity (Clarendon Press, 1996)
• 3Oswald Stack, Pasolini on Pasolini; Interviews with Oswald Stack. (Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 1969)