Review #432: 'The Canterbury Tales' (1972)

Continuing his 'Trilogy of Life' cycle exploring medieval literature, The Canterbury Tales by Pier Paolo Pasolini, delves into some of the tales weaved within Geoffrey Chaucer's famous stories. It explores the myriad sexual depravities and allusions with bawdy gusto, featuring almost every perversion known, from voyeurism, flagellation, homosexuality, to even the "love" of a watermelon. The disparate, prurient tales are interwoven with Pasolini plays Chaucer here at his writing desk, imaging his lasciviousness upon villagers. There is even a strange comic interlude paying homage to Charlie Chaplin, in the form of Pasolini regular, Ninetto Davoli.

Whilst the visual style is similar to The Decameron (1970 - Dante Feretti again is art director), the stories do not intertwine as well here, which could create some confusion in the viewer. With a largely British cast (including Tom Baker, Hugh Griffith, Jeeny Runacre, and even Robin Askwith), the film film sometimes feels like a slightly less repressed 1970's British sex comedy (Carry On Canterbury, if you like). With its delight in sexual promiscuity and perversion, it is certainly one of Pasolini's less than intellectual affairs, and even fails to humour. Unless of course your funny bone is easily pleased by fart jokes.

With a bizarre finale set in hell (its visual design clearly inspired by the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch), we see an over-sized Satan shitting out some plebeian folks, to the obscene delight of those scattered round the pits. Whilst this incredibly short ending is disgustingly joyous, it fails to save a very scatological film, that vies more towards the crass than the enlightening.


Directed by: Pier Paolo Pasolini
Starring: Hugh Griffith, Laura Betti, Ninetto Davoli, Franco Citti, Josephine Chaplin
Country: Italy/France

Rating: ***

Marc Ivamy

Review #303: 'The Decameron' (1971)

The first of what became Pier Poalo Pasolini's Trilogy of Life, with each film adapting stories from archaic literature. In this case, Giovanni Boccaccio's book of the same name, written in 14th century Italy. The film takes nine of the 100 stories from the book and weaves them into vignettes of everyday Medieval life. We see nymphomaniac nuns, grave robbing, deceit, and cuckolding. In one segment, a boy is lured into the house of a pretty girl. She tells him that he is her brother. however, after taking his clothes and money, the boy is thrown out, where he is picked up by a couple of thieves who recruit him to climb inside of a tomb and steal the recently dead archbishop's ruby ring. The boy is left trapped in the grave.

This bawdy romp is a lot of fun. This was a surprise being Pasolini. The portmanteau style storytelling works well with this roaming tour through a debauched, ancient landscape. Many of the oddball characters were non-actors (something Pasolini had used throughout his career), and some have such incredibly rickety teeth, and are a strange and uncomfortable, yet thoroughly enjoyable watch.

The film ends with a statement by Pasolini himself (he played the painter, Giotto between, and within some of the stories), which is possibly a statement about the dream like quality the narrative has in its assemblage of the parts. He says: Why create a work of art, when you can just dream about it? Indeed, why create narrative cinema, when you can manoeuvre through scenes of life and create a patchwork of living, permeated with verisimilitude.


Directed by: Pier Paolo Pasolini
Starring: Franco Citti, Ninetto Davoli, Vincenzo Amato
Country: Italy/France/West Germany

Rating: ****

Marc Ivamy