Accattone (1961)

User Rating:

7.9/10   

Director:

Pier Paolo Pasolini

Writers:

Pier Paolo Pasolini (story)
Pier Paolo Pasolini (screenplay)

Release Date:

4 April 1968 (USA)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

Pasolini's first film is a painfully realistic study of a pimp in Rome. Vittorio Accattone has never worked a day in his life...

Plot Keywords:

Pimp | Prostitute | Perjury | Arrest | Friend

Awards:

Nominated for BAFTA Film Award.

Cast

Franco Citti	...	Vittorio "Accattone" Cataldi
Franca Pasut	...	Stella
Silvana Corsini	...	Maddalena
Paola Guidi	...	Ascenza
Adriana Asti	...	Amore
Luciano Conti	...	Il Moicano
Luciano Gonini	...	Piede D'Oro
Renato Capogna	...	Renato
Alfredo Leggi	...	Papo Hirmedo
Galeazzo Riccardi	...	Cipolla
Leonardo Muraglia	...	Mammoletto
Giuseppe Ristagno	...	Peppe
Roberto Giovannoni	...	The German
Mario Cipriani	...	Balilla
Roberto Scaringella	...	Cartagine

Also Known As:

Accattone! (USA)
The Procurer (UK)
The Scrounger (USA) (informal English title)

Runtime:

120 min

Country:

Italy

Language:

Italian

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Spain:13 | Italy:VM18 | Portugal:M/12 | Finland:K-16 | UK:15 | Argentina:16 | UK:X (original rating)

Filming Locations:

Pigneto, Rome, Lazio, Italy

Company:

Arco Film

Trivia:

First Italian movie to be rated VM18. The previous rating system only including the VM16 rate was purposely changed.

Quotes:

Franco: Hurry up with the pasta or we'll look like the guys at the Nuremberg trial.

Movie Connections:

Edited into Bellissimo: Immagini del cinema italiano (1985)

A representative outset for a spectacular and controversial career

Pasolini's first film "Accatone" is exactly as one would expect a typical Pasolini film to be: wreathed in raw violence, and shot with a brilliant sense of poetic slash brutal realism, reminiscent of the neo-realism era, and perhaps, if not for sure, a semi-autobiographical portrait of life in the streets of Rome's peripheries. "Accatone" is, at its best, a chunk of life, which Pasolini managed to extract not as it initially was, but dramatically filtered through his own personal lyrical gaze. Gangs, prostitutes, lies and deceit lie in this film's core. A sense of irresponsible opportunism is seen in this film, almost no regrets for the past and no fears for the future. In fact, the movie's tragic hero, Vittorio Accatone, is a dark alter-ego of yet another favored Italian movie character, embodied only a year before by Marcello Mastroianni in "La Dolce Vita". Perhaps, in this case, Accatone was not a party animal journalist who sought ephemeral pleasure in social middle-class gatherings and women, but the spirit is, by itself, maintained astonishingly faithfully: Accatone is no longer a protagonist in Pasolini's movie, doomed to descend lower and lower in social class, losing both his dignity, his social acceptability and his profound "style", but a symbol, a metaphor for Pasolini's own political beliefs. Under this figure of a brute, behind the otherwise repelling image of a short dirty man with a sly smile and a peculiar walk, lies the failure of post war Italian government, a government which, according to this movie's subtext, strove so hopelessly to attain social and economical success for Rome's population, and somehow neglected or marginalized Rome's peripheries, causing people like Accatone and his girlfriends to result in prostitution and theft. A kind of pretension and make-belief well being which was also visible, at the time, in America. Yes, Accatone is the result of this American Dream's pastische.