directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini
Pier Paolo Pasolini: 40th Anniversary
In 1962,Pasolini was invited by an Italian newsreel producer to create a feature-length
film essay from his company’s library of footage. Inspired by diverse wealth of
imagery, Pasolini set out to make a film as “a show of indignation against the
unreality of the bourgeois world”. Assembling images from the Soviet bloc and various
anti-colonial movements as complement and contrast to the newsreel footage,
Pasolini crafted a remarkable tour de force of politically trenchant commentary
on the modern world, climaxing in a moving meditation on the death of Marilyn
Monroe. Fearing controversy and box-office failure, the producer ordered
Pasolini to cut the original version to less than an hour and then promptly
added a right-wing counterpart by the filmmaker Giovanni Guareschi, packaging
the two parts as one film. Disowned by Pasolini, this version was indeed a
failure. Although Pasolini’s original version remains lost, an ambitious
reconstruction was recently completed by Giuseppe Bertolucci and the Cineteca
di Bologna using the shot list and a dialogue transcript from the first
version, as well as Pasolini’s notes on music for the film.