Directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini • 1967 • Italy, Morocco Starring Franco Citti, Silvana Mangano, Laura Betti
Pier Paolo Pasolini’s powerfully iconoclastic take on Sophocles’s tragedy blends eras and cultures to create a searing exploration of fate, free will, and the things we fear most in ourselves. Shot amid the stark, elemental landscapes of the Moroccan desert, and set in an indefinable ancient past, this bold reimagining casts the filmmaker’s frequent collaborator Franco Citti as the eponymous foundling, whose willful blindness to his own nature unleashes a cataclysmic reckoning. With a prologue and epilogue set in twentieth-century Italy, Pasolini connects the story to his own upbringing, daring to bare his soul on-screen.
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Il bell’Antonio
Directed by Mauro Bolognini • 1960 • Italy, France
Starring Marcello Mastroianni, Claudia Cardinale, Pierre BrasseurScripted by Pier Paolo Pasolini, IL BELL’ANTONIO is a barbed, melodramatic satire of religion, sex, and society that gives Marcello Mastroianni a chance to play slyly against his ...
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Accattone
Directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini • 1961 • Italy
Starring Franco Citti, Franca Pasut, Silvana CorsiniPoet and painter turned filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini courted controversy with his very first feature by using Catholic iconography and liturgical music to render a plaintive, brutally beautiful p...
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Mamma Roma
Directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini • 1962 • Italy
Starring Anna Magnani, Ettore Garofolo, Franco CittiAnna Magnani is Mamma Roma, a middle-aged prostitute who attempts to extricate herself from her sordid past for the sake of her son. Highlighting director Pier Paolo Pasolini’s lifelong fascinatio...
