La ricotta and more

La ricotta

1962–63. Italy. Directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini. With Orson Welles, Mario Cipriani, Laura Betti. “La ricotta is an explosion of disgust at consumer society and its vulgarity, a scabrous reproach to the Catholic Church for its abandonment of the poorest members of that society, a film about a film about the Crucifixion that shows Christianity’s central symbolic event being staged within a circus of depravity. Its Christ is a starving film extra who gives his own box lunch to his hungry family, loses a meal he’s stolen to a visiting movie star’s lap dog, and, after managing to stuff himself with ricotta cheese, dies from indigestion on the cross” (Gary Indiana, Pasolini, Mama Roma, and La ricotta, 2004). In Italian; English subtitles. 35 min.

The Anger of Pasolini

1963. Italy. Directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Commentary in verse by Pasolini, spoken by Giorgio Bassani, Renato Guttuso. Reconstruction by Giusseppe Bertolucci. “La rabbia had an even more unfortunate history than La ricotta. Upon its completion, the producer—either for commercial reasons or fear of censorship—decided it should be released together with a second short film to be made by a director on the other side of the political spectrum, that is, on the right. (…) La rabbia is less an attempt to answer the ‘dramatic questions’ posed by the preface than what Pasolini called ‘a Marxist denunciation of society and recent events,’ or even a ‘cry of rage’ against human suffering and man’s inhumanity to man” (Naomi Green, Pier Paolo Pasolini: Cinema as Heresy, 1990). In Italian; English subtitles. 50 min.