11-13-2024, 10:18 PM
(This post was last modified: 11-13-2024, 10:20 PM by RiverNotch.)
Secondo Matteo
Italian Neorealists developed their style
in the face of the devastation that Mussolini wrought
not only on his country, but on all the world,
with their cinéma vérité shots, their abrupt editing,
and their casting of randoms from the street
for major roles, although Pasolini,
known before his foray into film
first for his poetry then for his politics
then for his dubious relationship with boys,
broke from this orthodoxy when he cast
his friends, all fellow intellectuals,
as apostles, his mother as the Virgin,
though none of them -- fair enough -- were actors
in the professional sense. And so this portrait
of our Lord for the silver screen,
still the greatest of its kind,
one could also rightly call
a film shaped by war, a film about war,
just as the spiritual man, by nature,
always lives through war.
Italian Neorealists developed their style
in the face of the devastation that Mussolini wrought
not only on his country, but on all the world,
with their cinéma vérité shots, their abrupt editing,
and their casting of randoms from the street
for major roles, although Pasolini,
known before his foray into film
first for his poetry then for his politics
then for his dubious relationship with boys,
broke from this orthodoxy when he cast
his friends, all fellow intellectuals,
as apostles, his mother as the Virgin,
though none of them -- fair enough -- were actors
in the professional sense. And so this portrait
of our Lord for the silver screen,
still the greatest of its kind,
one could also rightly call
a film shaped by war, a film about war,
just as the spiritual man, by nature,
always lives through war.