La rabbia di Pasolini (2008) User Reviews

A restored classic

[MaxBorg89 · 10/10 · 31 December 2008]

Pier Paolo Pasolini was always a controversial figure - as a journalist, poet, novelist or filmmaker, he was never completely satisfied unless he could upset someone. In 1963, he tried to do the most of it with La Rabbia (The Anger), a documentary that consisted of newsreel footage he would comment with a very critical voice-over, read not by him but by two of his artist friends, who would alternate between prose and poetry readings. The project was meant to be a fierce document reflecting Pasolini's personal views on politics, religion, war, the media and other important topics of the time. The it was decided that his left-wing opinions had to be accompanied by those of someone who thought the exact opposite. That someone was Giovanni Guareschi, the creator of Don Camillo, and his contribution to La Rabbia angered Pasolini to the point that he opted for shortening his segment and giving his "rival" more space, since his voice was being given less consideration anyway.

Which brings us to Pasolini's La Rabbia, the real one, available to the public thanks to the effort of Giuseppe Bertolucci, whose family was closely involved with Pasolini's film career (the more famous Bernardo Bertolucci, Giuseppe's brother, was a crew-member on the set of Accattone). With the help of the Film Archive of Bologna (Pasolini's home town), the original version of the film was restored by using the script as a guideline: the text was recorded alongside the existing soundtrack, and the supervisors of the project subsequently picked images they thought Pasolini himself could have chosen in 1963. As an extra treat, they also added unrelated footage (sketch shows and interviews) which could give a more complete idea of Pasolini's "anger".

Such an undertaking was huge to say the least, and the result is nothing short of astonishing: the film looks like it had been shot just a few years ago, and it's just as well, considering the relevance Pasolini's words still have to this day. In particular, his comments on consumerism have always been seen as a spot-on prediction, and he confirms this with his venomous statements about television, which he calls a "weapon for the spreading of lies or half-truths" and an object that leads to "the death of the soul". Such phrasing shows exactly how fearless the famous author was and provides fascinating insight of the mind of a peculiar individual, one who can even get away with comparing himself to the greatest "arrabbiato" of all time (his words), i.e. Socrates (this is shown in one of the extra interviews). Few people could say something like that with real conviction, and it's possibly the definitive proof of how much the world lost when Pasolini was brutally murdered in 1975: now more than ever, his voice is truly missed.

Pasolini's First Non Fiction Attempt Anticipates Godard

[lchadbou-326-26592 · 27 September 2013]

In recent years there's been renewed interest in what French writer/director Roger Leenhardt called back in the 40s the "essay film." Pasolini made an early stab at it with his hour long half of the 1963 La Rabbia (Anger) which did not receive a regular release at the time. Giuseppe Bertolucci (Bernardo's brother) came out with this reconstruction in 2008. Because we see two different versions of material from Italian newsreels covering the period after World War II through the early 60s, the layout is a bit confusing, and the commentary mostly by Pasolini, part poetry, part prose read by different voices in both segments is occasionally obtrusive. One longs to simply look at these historic images without having to deal with the dense text. The director concentrates on the contrast between a peasant world, that of the past, which he clearly identifies with, and the modern bourgeois world, which he critiques. He expresses hope (despite the terror he acknowledges accompanies them) in the liberation movements of people of color we see clips of from around the world-newly independent African countries but also Cuba. Pasolini's view of the Soviet Union is sympathetic, but there's an interesting passage involving an elderly tour guide steering the common folk of Russia through an art museum with specimens of the now frowned upon Socialist Realism.Pasolini mentions how such peasant types are being exposed to culture (a good thing) but then launches into a plea for a more radical art, examples of which(Ben Shahn, Georg Grosz) we next see in a striking switch from black and white to color. I quote from Sam Rohdie's translation: "We must begin again from the beginning, from where there is no certainty, and the sign is desperate, and the color strident, and the figures writhe...") The section of the film that the director had the most affection for later, but which seems to date the most, is a gushing tribute to the then just deceased Marilyn Monroe.In all of this Pasolini anticipates the later essay films of Godard, who would be even more playful with the juxtaposition of borrowed images and new sound.As a bonus, Bertolucci's restoration includes some related clips including a hilarious TV takeoff on Pasolini, a kind of Italian "Saturday Night Live."