Summary
In the slums outside Rome, a young man nicknamed Accattone passes the time with his friends,
all of whom have no prospect or desire to find an honest job. Having walked out
on his wife and young son, Accattone makes a reasonable living by pimping his girlfriend
Maddalena. One day, Accatonne’s life suddenly changes when he meets an honest and
pure girl, Stella. Deeply in love with Stella, Accatonne finds them a place to live,
starts to take an interest in personal hygiene, and gets a manual job. Accatonne’s new-found
happiness proves to be short-lived, however, as the pressure to return to his former life
of crime proves too great to resist…
Review
Having established himself as one of Italy’s foremost writers in the 1950s, Pier Paolo
Pasolini began his film-making career with Accattone, which he based on his novel
“A Violent Life”. As in many of his subsequent films, Accattone
is semi-autobiographical, recounting Pasolini’s own experiences in the “little homelands”,
the slum areas around the Italian capital. The style and subject of this film
were both radical and hugely controversial at the time – Pasolini’s sympathetic depiction
of a cynical pimp being particularly hard for a mainly Catholic Italian audience to digest.
What is perhaps most striking about Accattone is the way in which it is filmed.
The location shooting and naturalistic performances (from a cast composed entirely of
non-professional actors) suggest a neo-realist style. However, the way in which
many scenes are framed (reminiscent of Italian masterpieces of the Renaissance) and the
extensive use of music from Bach give the film a strongly spiritual, almost religious,
feel. The combination of harsh images of very real human suffering and beautiful
cinematography makes this a deeply poignant and intensely involving piece of cinema.
As in Pasolini's subsequent film, Mamma
Roma, the film graphically illustrates the hardship and ennui endured by young
people living in the slum towns. Both films also show how difficult it is to break
out of a life of crime and prostitution and attempt to make a better life. The central
figures in many of Pasolini's films are like flies hopelessly buffeting a window pane:
they glimpse a better life but are powerless ever to reach it.
© James Travers 2002
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See also:
Best Italian Films
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