Decameron (film)

Movie
German title	Decameron
Original title	Il decameron
Country of production	Italy
original language	Neapolitan
Publishing year	1971
length	112 minutes
Age rating	FSK 16
Rod
Director	Pier Paolo Pasolini
script	Pier Paolo Pasolini
production	Alberto Grimaldi
music	Ennio Morricone Pier Paolo Pasolini
camera	Tonino Delli Colli
cut	Nino Baragli Tatiana Casini Morigi
occupation
Franco Citti : Ser Ciappelletto Ninetto Davoli : Andreuccio da Perugia Jovan Jovanović : Rustico Angela Luce : Peronella Pier Paolo Pasolini : Giotto's pupil Giuseppe Zigaina : Confessor Vincenzo Amato : Masetto da Lamporecchio Guido Alberti : a wealthy trader Giacomo Rizzo : Padre Superiore Monique van Vooren : Queen of the Skulls Elisabetta Genovese : Caterina Silvana Mangano : Madonna
chronology
Successor  → Pasolini's maddened stories

Decameron is a film by the Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini from 1971. The film is an adaptation of nine stories from the collection of novels Decamerone by Giovanni Boccaccio .

action

Pasolini presents nine stories loosely taken from the literary model, with the anecdote about a Giotto pupil played by Pasolini himself , who came to Naples to paint the walls of the Church of St. Chiara with frescoes , continues between several episodes.

In between, the other eight stories are told in full, namely:

• The wealthy Andreuccio came to Naples from Perugia to buy horses; First he lets himself be robbed and then betrays several thieves for their valuable loot.
• The clever Masetto from Lamporecchio pretends to be deaf and dumb in order to be accepted as a gardener in a nunnery, where he has fun with the nuns.
• Petronella lures her husband into a large clay jar so that he can give himself to her lover.
• Ser Ciappelletto, a terminally ill sinner, plays one last farce for his confessor by posing as a saint.
• The teenage lovers Caterina and Riccardo manage to spend a night of love on the terrace despite their strict parents.
• The lovers Lisabeta and Lorenzo are torn apart by the young woman's brothers, the lovers are slain and buried.
• Pietro gives his pretty wife to Don Gianni so that he can turn her into a mare.
• Two basket weavers vow that after the death of one of them, he should return from the afterlife to report to the survivor from the afterlife. Although he dies because he has enjoyed himself too often with his girlfriend, he can report that this is not considered a sin in the hereafter.

In the final scene, the painter stands in front of his completed triptych , of which he has only completed two pictures, and ponders: "Why complete a work when it is wonderful to only dream of it?"

background

There is a lot of laughter about life and sex in the film. Sometimes it happens when you laugh that you encounter death. All characters are driven by the desire to improve their living conditions and to fulfill their wishes. Both clever and naive characters as well as saints and sinners appear.

Pasolini and his film have often been accused of pornography . The director, on the other hand, did not want to show sexuality in this and the two following films of his trilogy of life , but rather to make it the central dramaturgical moment of the staging.

The film was shot almost entirely in Italy in September and October 1970, in Naples and the Campagna , in Rome and the surrounding area, and in the north in Trento and Bolzano . Pasolini went to Sana'a in Yemen only for the episode Alibek Becomes Hermit , which is set in the Egyptian desert , but this sequence was not used later in the film. There in Yemen, Pasolini also shot the short documentary The Walls of Sana'a on leftover film material , in which he passionately campaigned for the preservation of the old town of Sana'a.

The other two films in the trilogy are Pasolini's maddened stories from 1972 and Erotic Stories from 1001 Nights from 1974.

Reviews

“After the stylized, mythical-allegorical Medea , Pasolini turns to the popular transfiguration of human sexuality and sensual pleasure, conjuring up the power of ordinary people and the“ archaic, dark, vital violence of their sexual organs ”. A consumer film by the Italian director that is not particularly convincing in its often naive-looking optimism about life. "

- Lexicon of international film

Awards

The film competed for the Golden Bear at the 1971 International Film Festival in Berlin . For his directorial work, Pasolini was awarded the Grand Jury Prize and received a Silver Bear .

Web links

• Decameron in the Internet Movie Database (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Decameron. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .