ACCATONE! Dir Piers Paulo Pasolini. 1961

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Accatone! (1961) is the first film by director Piers Paulo Pasolini and re-relased as part of a box set of his work. Accatone! features a pitiless, self-serving, manipulative young pimp living in the slums and rubble of Rome, whose lassitude is infectious. Images of his death recur throughout the film and he seems barely living. The exclamation mark in the title may be there to try and wake him up. Pasolini shot the film on the streets, using the people he found there rather than professional actors. The effect is a slow moving realism which casts the viewer as reluctant voyeur; it is impossible to gain any distance from the unrelenting sadism of hollow machismo.

Seeing this film fifty years after it was made, the misogyny in this film is deeply disturbing; women are either Madonna, virgin or whore. Accatone says prostitution is ‘a mother’s situation’ which provides the mixed message that it’s selfless and necessary for survival, yet he and his friends view whores as trash; to be beaten and abused. What is unclear is why the first girlfriend loves and remains loyal to him, and why the innocent virgin falls for him, charmless as he is. Shot in monochrome, with a mournful Bach soundtrack, this cheerless film fails to engage, other than in willing the girls to run away from him fast. Accatone fails to evoke sympathy or understanding.

Pasolini reinforces the idea that only a pure woman can save a man from himself - quite a responsibility - and Accatone falls for a blonde virgin who he then tries to pimp, but despises her for her acquiescence. She fails as a whore, and proves herself truly good, so the idea of redemption becomes a possibility to him; he insists she stay at home and that he will support her, a volte-face from his opening position. She has the happy option of becoming the incarcerated Mediterranean housewife.

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