Amongst the many cinematographic versions of the Decameron of particular significance is the one by Pier Paolo Pasolini of 1971. The film won the Silver Bear at the Berlin film festival. Despite this official recognition and its success with the public, the film was confiscated in many parts of Italy, following many accusations for pornography, all thrown out by the Trento court, that, asserting itself to be competent from a territorial point of view, regularly ordered the confiscation to be cancelled.
Pasolini’s film contains nine novellas from the Decameron (Andreuccio da Perugia [II, 5]; Masetto da Lamporecchio [III, 1]); Peronella [VII, 2]; Ciappelletto [I, 1]; Giotto e Forese [VI, 5]; Riccardo e Caterina [V, 4]; Lisabetta e Lorenzo [IV 5]; Donno Gianni [IX, 10]; Meuccio e Tingoccio [VII, 10]), choosing to set them all in Naples, which has an effect on the way the protagonists speak, as all dialogues are in dialect. To Boccaccio’s invention of the framework are substituted two guiding stories, that of Ciappelletto, played by Sergio Citti, in the first half of the film, and that of Giotto’s pupil, played by Pasolini himself, in the second half and the epilogue. The original screenplay reflects the fact that the film was originally planned to be three hours long, in three sections, a plan later abandoned. To this “fresco of the whole world”, as the director himself defined it in a letter to the producer Franco Rossellini[1], was substituted the film made in 1971 with a selection of novellas, chosen so as to address the key themes of the clash between social classes and sexual liberation.
Pasolini chose to represent a peasant reality that was naïve and innocent, in which instinct dominates interpersonal relations, without bigot or conservative preconceptions. The social inter-relations however produce a play of strength in which the bourgeois classes are juxtaposed to the lower ones, leading to the condemnation of the exploitation of the weak.
[1]P.P. Pasolini, Letters 1955-1975, ed. N. Naldini, Turin 1988, pp. 670-671
Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Decameron
