Porcile

                
Pier Paolo Pasolini's Porcile (Pigsty), from 1969, is a bifurcated allegorical film that I found to be more watchable than most of the work of the alleged Italian master. The film shuttles back and forth between two narratives. In the modern story, Julian Klotz(Jean-Pierre Leaud), the son of a wealthy German titan of business, aimlessly wanders his family's vast estate. He parries the romantic attentions of his girlfriend, Ida (Anne Wiazemsky), and surrenders to torpor. Things pick up when his father (Alberto Lionello in a Hitler mustache) negotiates a merger with a business rival played by Ugo Tognazzi. Tognazzi is able to negotiate a favorable settlement with the elder Herr Klotz because he has acquired some damaging information; namely that Julian has been having it off with the pigs in the estate's pens.

Pasolini claimed that his casting of French New Wave icons Leaud and Wiazemsky was because, since he was now making films for and about the bourgeoisie (like Teorema), France had a larger bourgeoisie to draw from than proletariat Italy. Pasolini would never cop to surrendering to commercial dictates, but the French duo never gibes with the Italian cast that surrounds them. The lack of chemistry between the duo doesn't hurt the film, Julian, after all, is supposed to be more interested in his porcine friends than Ida, but it does tax the viewer's patience. Lionello and Tognazzi seem to realize, unlike their French counterparts, that they are playing caricatures rather than fully rounded characters. Pasolini hips us to this by often shooting his players in profile and by referencing the acidic satire of the bourgeois by Brecht and Grosz. Lionello and Tognazzi's scenes have a comic rhythm to them that ones with the French duo lack.

Anne Wiazemsky in profile

The thematic gist of this section of the film is one shared by many Marxist European filmmakers of this era (Bertolucci, Visconti, Godard, Fassbinder, etc.); namely that the specter of fascism still haunted Europe despite the results of the Second World War. Fascism, in their view, has secreted itself within the socially acceptable guise of wealthy businessmen like Klotz who amuses himself by playing the "Horst Wessel Lied" on the harp. Klotz's wife speaks longingly of the vacation home in Syracuse they could have had if they won the war. Tognazzi's character is reputedly a Nazi who changed his identity after the war in order to secrete himself and escape paying for his crimes. No wonder the kids end up being indolent pig fuckers. The sardonic energy of Tognazzi and Lionello make this segment become more engaging as it moves along despite such technical mishaps as ridiculously shaky tracking shot down a corridor.

Happily, the other segment that makes up Porcile doesn't suffer from such hiccups. Pierre Clementi stars as a medieval soldier who ends up descending into rape, dismemberment, and cannibalism. A silent Passion Play in reverse, our protagonist ends up being tied to posts and devoured by wild dogs in a bummer of an ending that parallels the one in the modern story. What links the two intertwined stories is beyond me, but they do combine Pasolini's two biggest bugaboos, Capitalism and the Roman Catholic church. What I like about the medieval section is its twisted humor and its absurdly elegant compositions. Pasolini uses the volcanic landscapes more memorably than in Teorema and the cinematography boasts a primeval power. I don't think Pasolini gave two hoots about film technique (or bourgeois notions like characterization), but his subsequent releases would grow increasingly slipshod. Porcile is often a silly film, but it boasts moments of passion and probity that are rare in Pasolini's film canon.