Pier Paolo Pasolini

The Decameron

The Decameron

Pier Paolo Pasolini weaves together a handful of Giovanni Boccaccio’s fourteenth-century moral tales in this picturesque free-for-all. The Decameron explores the delectations and dark corners of an earlier and, as the filmmaker saw it, less compromised time. Among the chief delights are a young man’s exploits with a gang of grave robbers, a flock of randy nuns who sin with a strapping gardener, and Pasolini’s appearance as a pupil of the painter Giotto, at work on a massive fresco. One of the director’s most popular films, The Decameron, trans­posed to Naples from Boccaccio’s Florence, is a cutting takedown of the pieties surrounding religion and sex.

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Film Info

  • Italy
  • 1971
  • 111 minutes
  • Color
  • 1.85:1
  • Italian
  • Spine #632

Special Features

  • New digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
  • On “The Decameron,” a new visual essay by film scholar Patrick Rumble
  • The Lost Body of Alibech (2005), a forty-five-minute documentary by Roberto Chiesi about a lost sequence from The Decameron
  • Via Pasolini (2005), a twenty-seven-minute documentary featuring archival footage of director Pier Paolo Pasolini discussing his views on language, film, and modern society
  • Trailers
  • New English subtitle translation

Available In

Collector's Set

Trilogy of Life

Trilogy of Life

Blu-ray Box Set

3 Discs

$63.96

Collector's Set

Trilogy of Life

Trilogy of Life

DVD Box Set

4 Discs

$63.96

Special Features

  • New digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
  • On “The Decameron,” a new visual essay by film scholar Patrick Rumble
  • The Lost Body of Alibech (2005), a forty-five-minute documentary by Roberto Chiesi about a lost sequence from The Decameron
  • Via Pasolini (2005), a twenty-seven-minute documentary featuring archival footage of director Pier Paolo Pasolini discussing his views on language, film, and modern society
  • Trailers
  • New English subtitle translation
The Decameron
Cast
Franco Citti
Ciappelletto
Ninetto Davoli
Andreuccio of Perugia
Jovan Jovanovic
Rustico
Vincenzo Amato
Masetto of Lamporecchio
Angela Luce
Peronella
Giuseppe Zigaina
Monk
Pier Paolo Pasolini
Giotto’s pupil
Silvana Mangano
Madonna
Vincenzo Ferrigno
Giannello
Guido Alberti
Musciatto, the wealthy merchant
Vittorio Vittori
Don Gianni
Gianni Rizzo
Father Superior
Patrizia de Clara
Nun
Mirella Catanesi
Donna Gemmatta
Monique van Voren
Queen of Skulls
Giovanni Davoli
Pietro
Elisabetta Vito Genovese
Caterina
Credits
Director
Pier Paolo Pasolini
Executive producer
Franco Rossellini
Producer
Alberto Grimaldi
Assistant directors
Sergio Citti
Assistant directors
Umberto Angelucci
Written by
Pier Paolo Pasolini
Based on the stories of
Giovanni Boccaccio
Director of photography
Tonino Delli Colli
Supervising editor
Enzo Ocone
Editors
Nino Baragli
Editors
Tatiana Morigi
Art director
Dante Ferretti
Costumes
Danilo Donati
Music selections by
Pier Paolo Pasolini
Musical collaborator
Ennio Morricone
Continuity
Beatrice Banfi

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Pier Paolo Pasolini

Writer, Director

Pier Paolo Pasolini
Pier Paolo Pasolini

Pier Paolo Pasolini’s ability to simultaneously embrace conflicting philosophies—he was both a Catholic and a Marxist; a modern-minded, openly gay man who looked to the distant past for inspiration and comfort; a staunch leftist who at one point in the late sixties infamously spoke out against left-wing student protests (sympathizing instead with the working-class police)—was matched by the multifariousness of his professional life, as a filmmaker, poet, journalist, novelist, playwright, painter, actor, and all-around intellectual public figure. What he is best known for, however, is undoubtedly his subversive body of film work. He was a student of the written word, and among his earliest movie jobs was writing additional dialogue for Federico Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria (1957). Soon he was directing his first film, Accattone (1961), a tale of street crime whose style and content greatly influenced the debut feature of his friend Bernardo Bertolucci, La commare secca (1962), for which Pasolini also supplied the original story. The outspoken and always political Pasolini’s films became increasingly scandalous—even, to some minds, blasphemous—from the gritty reimagining of the Christ story The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964) to the bawdy medieval tales in his Trilogy of Life (1971–1974). Tragically, Pasolini was found brutally murdered weeks before the release of his final work, the grotesque, Marquis de Sade–derived Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975), still one of the world’s most controversial films.

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