Pier Paolo Pasolini: Cinema as Heresy

by Naomi Greene

The major Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini was also a poet, novelist, essayist, and iconoclastic political commentator. Naomi Greene reveals to English-speaking readers the diverse talents that made him one of the most controversial European intellectuals of the postwar era, at the center of political and cultural debates still vital to our time. Greene presents Pasolini's films to the English-speaking world in full detail and in a rich critical context, using them to trace the evolution of his ideas and the details of his troubled personal life from 1950, when he settled in Rome, to 1975, the year of his brutal murder, apparently at the hands of a young male prostitute. "In her concise and sympathetic book, Greene intelligently explicates the political and social context within which Pasolini became both a leading figure and a significant heretic. He was an atheist who directed one of the few genuinely profound biblical films in the cinema, a communist who severely criticized many of the radical movements of modern Italy. Though he publicly acknowledged his homosexuality, he privately referred to it as his "sickness." As the book well documents, Pasolini was not a rebel but rather an authentic heretic who worked in contradiction to both his medium and milieu."--Choice

Originally published in 1990.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Genres: Film

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

Reviews

[Drew Praskovich · Rating 4 out of 5]

Looooooved

[Mizuki]

No rating because I didn't read the whole book.

[Dan Humphrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books I've read on a single filmmaker. It inspired me to go back and get a masters in film! Rich in history, theory, biographical detail, and showcasing a keen critical mind.

[Catnaitab · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not the easiest book to read, since it contains quite a lot of philosophic theories on film that the author does not try to explain or expand on. But it does seem like a wonderful book to get to know Pasolini better, maybe even to understand this mysterious artist better than any of his films. Although it does analyse all of his feature films the analyses seem to be concentrating on few particular elements in a lot of detail, and showcasing different opinions of other critics and scholars to these elements and to the films themselves. So it ends up feeling more like an attempt at a biography of Pasolini told through his films and these elements that are directly connected to the ambiguous Pasolini. It is a book that clearly applies the auteur theory and although it might not please everyone it does give a really interesting picture of this controversial filmmaker. It also has beautiful quotes and refers to a lot of Pasolini's inspirations that might make you want to delve deeper into various forms of arts and various artists.