"Scandalous desecration": Accattone against the neorealist city
2004; Wayne State University Press; Volume: 45; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1559-7989
Autores Tópico(s)Italian Literature and Culture
ResumoAccattone (Italy, 1961), Pier Paolo Pasolini's first film, opens with a close-up of a man's vulgar laughing face, its mouth missing teeth, a bouquet of flowers held next to it, crowding image. The shot is utterly simple and yet utterly bold; its function is difficult to interpret. Rather than express anything discursive or psychological, this opening close up, in Geoffrey Nowell-Smith's words, expresses only the enigma that is human (Nowell-Smith 1977, 11);1 in other words, face just is-and furthermore, it first appears to us dislocated from both its body and its immediate surroundings. As camera cuts to this face's interlocutors, we see character in his physical milieu. The first image of film gives us no clue as to its location; laughing face is abstracted from its surroundings by means of close-up. Obviously, this is Italy; people are speaking Italian-or some version of it, and, what's more, there's a group of men seated outside a cafe-or bar in Italian. (Actually, if we were skilled in dialects of Italian peninsula we might pick up that characters are speaking some form of romanesco-Roman working-class dialect.) There are buildings in background lining a seedy street that extends back and away. It is an urban location, that much seems true-taller, newer buildings-apartment high-rises-glower over one-story shanties. It seems safe to say that we are not in middle of some centro storico. No, we don't really know exactly where we are. is because we are in borgate, squalid peripheral Roman neighborhoods where city meets field and high-rise meets hovel. opening shot of a laughing face interests us not so much for what face expresses-humor, a sociological type, an enigma. Rather, shot is remarkable for what it is not. It is not an establishing shot, stock-in-trade of fiction films, especially fiction films that are set in cities and that, like Accattone, are principally characters traveling to and from different locations in city. There is no knowing where we are in that first shot; space is, as yet, an unknown integer. And once we get a bit more information in successive shots, we are still fumbling toward some recognition of place. In contrast, let us compare this film's opening shot with those of another film that is about Rome: Roma, citta aperta (Roberto Rossellini, Italy, 1945). In that film, our first image is of German soldiers crossing well-trod and easily recognized Piazza di Spagna. The effect of such a shot: This is Rome.2 The first shot of Pasolini's first film proposes same thing, only we recognize this in retrospect. This is Rome; yes, but this is a Rome yet unknown to most, one of toothless grins, lowly streets, proliferating shacks and unmarked open spaces whose names we cannot guess. The present essay seeks to interpret Accattone in light of places in which it was set and shot and with regard to careful attention Pasolini pays to dimensions of urban space of Roman periphery. Much can be understood this film by contextualizing it inside history of postwar Roman urban development. In fact, this adumbrating history, I hope to demonstrate, provides a key for understanding certain central aspects of film's style, as well as Pasolini's polemical attitude toward legacy of Italian cinematic neorealism. In Accattone's initial scene, after man who is subject of that first close up has continued on his way, men seated outside cafe discuss-with an earnestness and intensity perhaps unwarranted by their subject-the danger posed by swimming too soon after eating. Among these men is title character, Accattone (played by Franco Citti), who wagers he can eat a full meal and swim back and forth across Tiber (really just a ploy on his part to get a free meal). A simple cut ends this scene. Pasolini finally gives us security of knowing we are in Rome in next shot. …
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