Uccellacci e uccellini

Confusing but fascinating motion picture about the experiences of a father and son. A Felliniesque story with the two main characters experiencing anything strange or surreal tht comes their way. Maybe influenced from the work Pasolini did with Fellini on Nights of Cabiria(1957) and La Dolce Vita(1960). Has many areas in it that is characteristic of a Federico Fellini film. Even the father reminds me of some characters from a Fellini picture. The direction is simple as well as subtle. Uccellacci E Uccellini/Hawks & Sparrows(1965) is Pasolini's lightest and most gentle picture of his filmography. Light years away from the controversial and nilistic sections of his later films. An uncharacteristic film for Pier Paolo Pasolini because of its cheerful and clownish nature. The comedy in Hawks and Sparrows(1965) is in the tradition of such silent greats as Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd. Complex film that probably should be seen more than once to attempt at getting a clear meaning of its allegoric nature.

Hawks and Sparrows(1965) gets some good acting from the leads Toto and Ninetto Davoli. On casting people for Pasolini's film he remarked("I use both actors and non-actors, and I am not interested in their ability. I take them for what they are") with an interesting line. This quote from Pasolini is important in the casting of Hawks and Sparrows(1965) because of his personal perference of non actors over actors. The first film I have seen with the actor Toto. Ninetto Davoli does a decent job for a person who never acted before in his life. The rest of the actors are good in the segments they are in. The director liked using non actors because he wanted a natural and unconscious style that could not be possible with a pro actor. Pier Paolo Pasolini was one of the best and most rare type of movie makers to inhibit is cinema with mostly non actors. Each episode is funny and yet intellegent. Pasolini conveys the character of Toto as someone who is unaware of life around him. Filled with the usual political beliefs Pasolini was into.

The opening credits are creative and very unusual. They are played over the screen in the form of a prose. I only wish that more films would use this kind of opening credits instead of the usual opening credits because its more interesting here. The director's intention was to make a film that was pure prose and in the tradition of Buster Keaton and Charles Chaplin. Hawks and Sparrows(1965) does retain the elements of the tragic comedy with the themes of class and poverty. Ennio Morricone plays one of his best film scores in a non Leone film. Pasolini and Morricone did some good work together as director and film composer. Shows how good Pasolini was at in using simple images to push forward a themematic idea. The bird that follows the father and son represents something that is the total opposite of the two. Visual poetry at its finest and and most beautiful. One scene that has recently resurfaced during the late 1980s was an unreleased episode called "Toto At The Circus".

Pier Paolo Pasolini's 'The Hawks and the Sparrows' (the Italian title is 'Uccellacci e uccellini') is a film that is difficult to decipher. In 1966 the Italian director had not yet produced his most controversial works, but this film already shows him as a radical creator, both in terms of the load of ideas he tries to convey in less than the 90 minutes that the film lasts and by the metaphorical way in which he chooses to do it. We are dealing with a parabola allegory including many interesting and innovative cinematic elements, some of them quite funny, but it is not an entertainment film. The problem with this film as with others of Pasolini is that much of the ideological wars that the Italian director and intellectual waged in his time have since been either won or forgotten by history. The result is that looking at this film today, viewers judge it by its cinematic and entertaining qualities, ie exactly those components that for Pasolini were just tools to transmit ideas from the creator of films to his viewers.

The story takes place on an endless road. The road of life? The path that Charlie Chaplin takes at the end of his films? The two characters could actually be the Vagabond and the kid who accompanies Charlot, as seen many years later. Here they are father and son, and on their way they meet landscapes and people who belong to the immediate reality or to pure fantasy. Neo-realism mixes in the world of Pasolini's film with fantasy. People live their lives on the margins of society, women have nothing to put in the pot to feed their families, tenants are threatened with eviction from their homes because they have not paid their rents, prostitutes work in the cornfield. The two heroes, father and son, eternal vagabonds, meet a talking raven who declaims the ideology of the left and travel back in time seven centuries to convert to Catholicism the birds (the hawks and the sparrows in the title) at the urging of St. Francis. Their universe is cruel, an era is coming to an end (symbolised by the funeral of a communist leader), and hawks eat sparrows despite all the efforts of Catholicism. The world is incoherent and ideologies are dying.

The message of the film also translates into an unconventional demonstrative cinematic treatment, rejecting canons, narrative rules, or aesthetics. The film begins with a generic sung to the music of Ennio Morricone. The following scenes seem to be under the influence of neo-realism, even when a group of young people improvise a dance number that would also find its place in the films of Jacques Demy, Pasolini's French contemporary. What follows, however, belongs rather to surrealism combined with the absurd. The acting performances are extraordinary. The only professional actor is Totò, a famous comedian and clown, in one of the great roles of his career. The young Ninetto Davoli, a discovery of Pasolini, at his second film, was quite anonymous and uncorrupted by acting schools to fit perfectly into the style of the film. The rest of the cast is made up of non-professionals and they are the ones who give authenticity to this mixture of social and religious criticism imbued with a dreamlike nihilism that only Pasolini was capable of. 'The Hawks and the Sparrows' is an atypical film even for Pasolini's creation, unequal, but which offers many moments of cinematic pleasure.

"Where goes humanity?" - "I don't know!" Maybe it's a comedy, but I don't think anyone is 100% sure what kind of a film this really is. It's not really comedic, because behind all those absurdities and silliness there lies a seriously political and religious concern, a bittersweet desire and infallible disappointment. Maybe we should take the film as what it is, as one-of-a-kind, a cinematic high jump which gives rise to all sorts of speculation and conjectures without knowing where to start and where it ends.

Not only the viewer is left unsure, the protagonists are, too. They embody the condition of the film's unsureness perfectly, as well as the nature of one of the most unique works of Italian cinema, which is also the most variant and formally abstract film project of Pasolini: A weird story, a picaresque tale which mixes metaphors and cinematic references (from Keaton's statics to Chaplin's poesy of the dusty road to Fellini's clowns to Rossellini's monks); a philosophic apology which depicts the end of ideologies, the crisis of Marxism on the background of the clash of rulers and subjects (hawks and sparrows) and the unfortunate encounter of those who have the blessing of knowledge (the wise raven) and those who outlive themselves without the awareness of being part of this world: Totò and Ninetto, father and son. Both are walking the eternal road of a universe which is merciless, discuss pretentious things and express themselves with the help of their basic instincts: physical needs, but also the hate towards inferiors and subservience to superiors. On their way, they encounter the mystery of life and death (birth of a child, a family that kills themselves with gas, a funeral), as well as the mortal fear of those who starve. Until the raven appears, decides to go along with them and overwhelms them with needless wisdoms.

It's great to see Totò in here, a masterful actor who often was criminally misused in abysmal Italian entertainment movies and shows here the wide range of his talent. The interaction with the young, intuitive Ninetto Davoli is probably the biggest joy in this film.

One delightful saturday afternoon spent with this movie at the portuguese Cinema Museum. This picture can be identified as "another Pasolini movie" or as well as "another Toto movie", and both reasons are more than enough to make anyone curious to see it. Pasolini gives us a pleasant Toto comedie, filled with intelectual and political information, pretty well disguised as a fable about birds and priests. After this, I am convinced that a title with the name PASOLINI on it doesn't necessarily have to be a though, brutal, sexual, 3-hour-lengthed filmic exercise. It can be a simple weekend afternoon movie to watch with your parents or your kids. On the other hand, a simple comedy with one of its masters ("toto") doesnt necessarily have to be shallow and basic. This movie is worth a "jump like a sparrow" into a theatre, whenever you have a re-run around.

How does one describe a film like this? Imagine a Bunuel film like THE MILKY WAY. A couple of men walking on an empty road. They're on a strange journey only their destination is the beginning of their journey (huh?) and the two men are as funny as the best cinema clowns in screen history. Somewhat Felliniesque, somewhat Chaplinesque, throw in a little De Sica and even a dash of Monty Python and you can begin to have some idea of what this incredible blend of absurd and hilarious satire is like. Unlike Bunuel's films, this film is joyous. It has heart, passion, and an imagination springing somewhere from the soul. The film takes its stabs at religion, academics, and government but it does it in a playful way that leaves one feeling rejuevenated instead of that sour feeling that one feels after watching most social satires. It's hard to believe that this is a Pasolini film. It's about as far on the spectrum from SALO that one can get, yet it's sad that in comparison this film is almost completely unknown.

This is definitley worth seeking out on video. I'm hoping that I can find a soundtrack recording for this. It is one of the best Ennio Morricone scores I've heard, which is saying a great deal!