Page 36 - Studio International - March 1969

his concepts of the 'epic-mythic' and analogy tine years which belong to the traditional moods of
as guidelines, a combination of artistic levels `decadent' art—with all its refinement, escapism,
to provide shading and depth. He uses direct love of the Baroque and exquisite.
speech at the realist level of dialect or slang, `These elements are still apparent in Visconti's
a descriptive level based on the interior mono- latest film Rocco and his Brothers, which, in
logue of his characters and the more objective spite of his clear Marxist thesis, is embellished—
level of narrative which is his own reflective magnificent though it be— with a taste that can only
and interpretative one. They interact to pro- be defined as decadent—bourgeois and aristocratic
vide the shading and depth he desires. and consequently in contradiction to the realistic theme
Just as Masaccio is not the sole influence from of the film.' 3
painting to be found in his films, so the influ- Pasolini has said that from his work it is evi-
ence of other directors can be seen. He has dent that he is interested in living and docu-
said of those who have influenced him: mentary events.4 Il Vangelo Secondo Matteo
`There are three of them: Dreyer, Chaplin and works analogously with contemporary society.
Mizoguchi. If you analyse Accatone, you'll see Even Edipo Re is not solely located in its
that Dreyer's Passion de Jeanne d'Art has historical setting. The film changes its time
influenced me by giving me the sense of close up, the locale twice, finishing in the present day.
sense of figurative severity, visual severity as we It is worth looking at Il Vangelo Secondo Matteo
were saying.'1 in some detail. He was attracted to it 'because
Teorema which was shown at Venice in 1968 in Marxist terminology he was the most
has more than a touch of Michelangelo proletarian and the most historically con-
Antonioni and Il Vangelo Secondo Matteo seems scious.'4 'I liked the Christ of Matthew', said
to have the texture of a Roberto Rossellini Pasolini, 'he was rigorous, demanding and
film. absolute. This is the Christ who says — "I came
In La Ricotta which followed Accatone, there is not to send peace, but a sword," the Christ
a pastiche of the silent films. It has a Chaplin- who will "burn up the chaff with unquench-
esque central character. This led to two films able fire", and who calls his contemporaries "a
in which dialogue is hardly apparent. His generation of vipers".'5 He uses musical
adaptation of Sophocles Oedipus Rex has a long analogies from Bach's St Matthew's Passion,
and brilliant introduction containing no dia- Prokoffiev's Congolese Sung Mass and Odetta's
logue and Teorema is virtually a silent film. version of 'Sometimes I feel like a Motherless
This is in part related to his view that the Child', to relate by association to the screen
visual image 'can have an allusive force image and to emphasize its meaning. The
equivalent to that of a word'.2 When, for Bach, for instance, is a ritualization of a
example, Accatone the pimp takes a job narrative.
loading metal in a yard, he finds himself `These Epical-religious elements play a very
totally exhausted. 'But it's Buchenwald' he important role ...music is the focal element, almost
says. In Teorema the same point is made the exterior trappings of an internal stylistic ap-
solely with the image when the wife (Silvana proach, of a given way of shooting, of seeing things,
Mangano) leaves the squalid room of her of feeling the character, in a way that is realized
lover. The barbed wire on top of the wall in the ...solemn fixity of my shots."
isolates the city. It is a device for separating The costumes are based on the Piero della
the classes to indicate the life that some people
live outside the town.
He values the cinema as a linguistic contact
with the mass of Italian illiterates. Writing in
1961, he criticized the neo-realist film direc-
tors for failing to observe a style consistent
with the subject with which they were dealing.
Referring to the 'New Realism' he writes :
`I believe that the writer must adhere to a form of
realism, that is he must apply to his work that
critical and conscience-minded ideology which will
enable him to penetrate the reality of his time,
interpreting it through the ideology in which he
believes. In Italy at this moment, I maintain that
the only possible ideology is the socialist philosophy,
Marxism...In Visconti, there is this tendency to
observe reality through the Marxist eyeglass. But
at the same time, there is the influence of his forma-
2
Il Vangelo Secondo Matteo
3
Laius in Edipo Re
4
Edipo Re
5
Detail from the frescoes by Piero
della Francesca at Arezzo