Accattone [1961]

 Pier Paolo Pasolini – who was already an acclaimed poet, established writer and prolific editor by then, and had also dabbled in cinema, having assisted Fellini in the screenplays of Nights of Cabiria and La Dolce Vita – made a fierce and persuasive filmmaking debut with Accattone. As a firebrand Marxist with a deeply conflicting relationship with his Catholic background, and possessing radical empathy for those who belonged to the “urban underclass”, it was only apposite that his first two films – this and his furious follow-up Mamma Roma – were both harsh portrayals and poetic paeans to pimps, prostitutes and lowlifes, with religious undertones. The film, interestingly, ostensibly bore neorealism’s social, formal and moral commitments – emphasis on everyday struggles, “real” locations, non-professional actors and gritty authenticity – while also being deliberately mannered, expressionistic and with a stirring allegiance towards an existential choice that’s fundamentally opposed to societal expectations and middle-class aspirations, which steadfastly placed it beyond neorealist boundaries; this dichotomy made this lyrical and edgy film a strikingly modernist work, despite its seemingly classical façade. Vittorio (Franco Citti, the younger brother of the film’s co-writer Sergio Citti, in his acting debut), who prefers to go by the eponymous name which means “bum”, is a pimp who lives in the working-class suburbs of Rome, and like his destitute pals, he’s proud that he doesn’t work. When the woman who supports him through prostitution gets jailed, his life becomes increasingly tough, desperate and even doomed, and more so when he becomes smitten with a naïve young woman. That said, one might say that the life of this “saint of the gutter”, like that of his fellow marginalized and delinquent drifters, was doomed to start with.

Director: Pier Paolo Pasolini

Genre: Drama/Urban Drama

Language: Italian

Country: Italy