Uccellacci e uccellini

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!

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.

"Uccellacci e uccellini" aka "The Hawks and the Sparrows" (1964) - directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini

This is a movie that begins like no other introducing the cast and the crew in the manner that is charming, original, melodious and promising of even better things to follow. The fun begins actually with its Italian title, "Uccellacci e uccellini". I don't know about you but the sound of the title simply makes me smile, it sounds like the birds themselves whispered or chirped it to the Pasolini's ear. It is possible to make a satirical philosophical fable concerned with the serious and even grave matters as religion, social and political systems and the order of things and at the same time highly enjoyable, often hilarious, sometimes sorrowful, always original, in one word -Pasolinesque. "Uccellacci e uccellini" talks about desires, death, the meaning of life, Christianity, and Marxism but first and foremost, it entertains. It is about a father (Italian clown Toto) and his young and naive son (Nino Davoli) whom Pasolini sends to the endless cyclical journey on the road of life where they soon will be joined by a talking crow, will be catapulted 750 years back in time and by the request of ST.Francis, they would become two saints (Toto with his clown's face makes a great saint) who would teach the birds (the hawks and the sparrows) the word of God, in the birds' language, of course. The birds seem to agree and accept the words of love but as we know the love comes and goes but everyone (including birds) has to eat and the hunger does not help to improve the understanding between the hawks and the sparrows and between the humans and the crows, even the talking crows. Some were born to kill and to eat the others and there is not much could be changed about it. Two men will be magically returned back to the present time, will go to funeral, will see the baby born, will meet a beautiful desirable girl named Luna who reminds them how divine the fresh hay smells and how much fun it is to make love in it... Their journey would end where it began and on and on and on they go around the world in circles turning. As for the talking crows, "Takers and fakers and talkers won't tell you. Teachers and preachers will just buy and sell you. When no one can tempt you with heaven or hell- You'll be a lucky man!"

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.