Il Decameron

Pasolini is the only one of my cherished filmmakers who does not have a film in my list of greats, a weird thing. I love how he makes films but the main narrative thrust as carried in the long arch is usually so obvious, so extrovertly Italian, exposing modern absence of purpose in Teorema, human self-delusion here, that it seems like something we always knew.

But he is a master of sculpting cinematic air, and this is a truly intelligent work of the medium, and not for any point it makes for sexual freedom or against religion.

A few of the individual joys first, because he is so joyous to watch. The faces he finds, such astonishingly expressive Italians. they are not actors in the ordinary sense, they do not mask deeply troubled soul in the coy way of puritans like Bergman. They are human sculptures, each one seemingly handpicked as exuberant fresco of earthy, toothless mirth. His sense of place is naked, unadorned, discovered; unlike so many Merchant Ivory or Hollywood period pieces, I feel like I inhabit this world. His camera, again unadorned, even sloppy at times, but as revelatory as anyone's.

In all these he teases the same spontaneous quality, that is what gives his work a certain careless air; but that is being carried by inspiration, instead of fixating on appearance. As honest as it is vital, because it was not excessively tampered with. He does not impose, paint beauty from the outside, it inwardly springs from air, from the flow of tangible emotion in tangible space jolting us into direct experience. Herzog could do it while being magical, few others. The film is a comic-book, an operabuffa in its narrative, but it's not without gravity that is life, nor is this the same as that tired business of 'realism' favored by the unimaginative like Nolan.

Where it really soars is in the overall gaze, however pleasant, it is the gaze that elevates this to required viewing for me.

All you need to know about the film is that it is in the form of thematically linked stories, centered in medieval Naples with rascals and scoundrels caught in mischief, often sexual. It is both funny and poignant, a film made for the same rowdy people it depicts. As said, the deeper purpose of the work is so readily available, show the marvelously flawed human being in all its buffonery and self- delusion, we may be inclined to think it 'small'. I think the problem is largely ours, myself included—we often mistake complexity for intelligence, reason with words instead of seeing the formative fabric.

So this isn't complicated in what it says, but it is some of the most intelligent stuff I have seen.

Look at the film again. In each story someone is being deceived, as are we watching a film. In each story, as in the overall film, the lie or deception reveals a more penetrating truth about self. Various selves pursue truth (linked to freedom from the norm), sometimes against the restraints of the story, sometimes killed by the story, sometimes negotiated to be a part of the story. So the easiest thing to do, what many crass minds would do, is to emphasize the strongest emotion, despair in one story, hypocrisy in another, and pull on that to draw audience reactions. We'd still have pretty much the same point, human buffoonery.

It's all in Pasolini's multifaceted expression; in the first story with Andreuccio who came to buy horses, the poignant, ascetic lesson of 'thank god for losing your money' is uttered by two sneaky louts, so registers as both guidance and deception; in the story with the fake deaf-mute boy in the convent, the head nun deludes herself with the nonsensical miracle but simply oozes sexual joy as she rushes to ring the bell; in the story with two young lovers discovered the morning after sex by the parents of the girl, there is obvious hypocrisy by the father but everyone in the end happily gets his heart's desire; in the story with the illicit Sicilian boyfriend, we have both a sense of genuine bonding in the grove among the boys and awareness of its duplicity.

The apotheosis, the most emblematic instance, is perhaps the cuckold potter; we get once more both the obvious duplicity, being cheated on, but also the ecstatic, enigmatic laughter of the divine fool who is each of us.

See, Pasolini could point out social wrongs, or just plain stupidity, as well as Godard, but he could not afford to be a sweeping fool. Remember, he was a communist expelled from the Party in his youth because of his homosexuality—the best thing that could happen to him as an artist.

What he does here is the same, a truly gentle soul. He sketches very simple desires, then bit by bit he challenges the simplicity of our logical leaps in dealing with them, leaps over unfathomable soul. The nun's miracle is nonsensical, but that is her way of coping with newfound joy.

Who's to condemn her? Who, not being able to see her ecstasy, would be so dumb as to point out the fallacy of the miracle?

This is real intelligence folks, the foundation of it. Seeing through the illusion to the self that gives rise to it, this being real freedom from the norm.

The erotic and more or less picaresque stories of which this movie is composed is based upon a collection of tales written in the 14th century by Bocaccio an Italian writer already called the Voltaire of 14th century. In the Middle Ages there was a tendency later abandoned, of considering erotic adventures under a humoristic point of view. The most common "hero" of those tales was the cuckold husband. I'm not a great fan of Pasolini. However this movie is more or less successful in depicting a series of funny situations related with erotic entanglements. Its merit is more due to the narrative form than to the stories itselves some them less funny than others. But the composition of the successive scenes develops in a series of pictures full of colour and movement portraying the people in the streets in a realistic way, showing popular types such as peasants, merchants, priests, nuns, etc. most of them with no make-up at all which contributes to create a vivid atmosphere that really puts us in the middle of a mediaeval scenery. Not a masterwork but something worth to be seen anyway.

After adapting "Gospel according to Saint-Matthews" as no one had done before (and after ) him ,in a drastically anti-Hollywood style ("greatest story ever told" and the Italian's opus are worlds apart),Pasolini brushed away the cobwebs from Greek myths such as "Oedipe" and "Medea".Then he began his trilogy of life which would also encompass "the Canterbury tales" and "fiore della mille e una notte".

"Il decameron" is the first and it created the surprise in 1971:no one had been as bawdy as Pasolini at the time (and I wonder if someone had since).This is a movie made up of little sketches ,all adapted from

Boccacio and they respect the original stories (notably the" nightingale" segment)Probably the funniest of the trilogy,and the happiest -both "Canterbury" and "mille e una" feature some dark scenes :a gay is burned alive in the former,an adolescent's murdered in the latter.

That said,"Il decameron" and the two other parts are not for all tastes:bawdiness,vulgarity and scatology may repel some.

I haven't yet seen too many Pasolini films / I intend to do so though... I suppose many combine him with the disgusting Salo (100 days in Sodoma) but thats not the case here.

In Decameron is actually several shorts, 9 or so, a series of funny tales in medieval Italy with similar touch and atmosphere. The humour is great, we had various laughs in almost every single bit. Some of the humour might of course offend hardcore Christians, but this is by no means a minus in my book. Pasolini's assault to this eras ethics is truly a delight! And even if this dates back to 1971, the stories remain fresh and provocative as is, and this is the height of Pasolini's vision.

Many indicated this as erotic. Sure, there is much of full frontal male and female nudity, some of which quite stimulating, which might be too much for some. But this ain't no erotic film. There are stories which have not erotic element in - and there are nude scenes which function as laugh scenes. Overall, this is a multi-layered short-stories film. I RECOMMEND THIS TO ALL FANS OF COMEDY & European FILMS.

The first of what became Pier Poalo Pasolini's Trilogy of Life, with each film adapting stories from archaic literature. In this case, Giovanni Boccaccio's book of the same name, written in 14th century Italy. The film takes nine of the 100 stories from the book and weaves them into vignettes of everyday Medieval life. We see nymphomaniac nuns, grave robbing, deceit, and cuckolding. In one segment, a boy is lured into the house of a pretty girl. She tells him that he is her brother. however, after taking his clothes and money, the boy is thrown out, where he is picked up by a couple of thieves who recruit him to climb inside of a tomb and steal the recently dead archbishop's ruby ring. The boy is left trapped in the grave.

This bawdy romp is a lot of fun. This was a surprise being Pasolini. The portmanteau style storytelling works well with this roaming tour through a debauched, ancient landscape. Many of the oddball characters were non- actors (something Pasolini had used throughout his career), and some have such incredibly rickety teeth, and are a strange and uncomfortable, yet thoroughly enjoyable watch.

The film ends with a statement by Pasolini himself (he played the painter, Giotto between, and within some of the stories), which is possibly a statement about the dream like quality the narrative has in its assemblage of the parts. He says: Why create a work of art, when you can just dream about it? Indeed, why create narrative cinema, when you can manoeuvre through scenes of life and create a patchwork of living, permeated with verisimilitude.

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