Cinecittà Personaggi

people

2/11/2005

DARIO E. VIGANÒ (Editor of film magazine, Rivista del Cinematografo)

Pasolini and poor Christ

[by Cr P]

Thirty years on from the death of Pier Paolo Pasolini we asked Dario Viganò, priest, critic and editor of the film magazine "Rivista del Cinematografo", to paint a portrait of the poet and director from a religious point of view.

 

This relationship was marked by difficulties like the seizure of part of the collective film Ro.Go.Pa.G.(La ricotta) accused of "defaming the state religion", and the case went to trial, though an appeal court judgement in May 1964 judged Pasolini innocent as the what he was charged with didn't actually constitute a crime. Then on the other hand, The Gospel According to Matthew , was strongly attacked by the left and greatly appreciated by the right and the Catholic church.

 

What sort of figure of Christ did Pier Paolo Pasolini bring to the big screen?
I would say a poor Christ, far removed from the Hollywood image of him. Pasolini already showed the differences between his vision and the Hollywood biopic in La ricotta, which was a baroque work of incredible vitality, where Jesus becomes a lower working class man forced to deal with hunger and desperation every day. Pasolini.

What about his Gospel according to Matthew?
Pasolini stripped off the kid gloves that other directors had used when handling the image of Christ, uncovering the scandal and the beauty of the evangelic message, setting the film in Southern Italy with the open faced of non-professional actors.

 

What was his approach to the scared?
Pasolini tried to bring out the sacred in a rigid middle class society. His art became the tragic representation of this unhealthy conflict between man, society and the sacred. As the director himself said in a debate after the release of the Gospel: "during the particular historical time when Christ was in circulation, to say to the people to turn the other cheek at your enemy was a non-conformist thing to do, that sent shivers down the spines of the leaders of the time, creating an unsupportable scandal. And in fact they crucified him. I dont see why Christ cannot be seen in this sense as a revolutionary". Like his cinema, Pasolinis Christ was also a revolutionary.

 

 

CinecittàNews Paper has dedicated the whole of its upcoming issue to Pier Paolo Pasolini. The magazine, published only in Italian, will be available shortly online.

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