The Frog
Pier Paolo Pasolini
The Frog
Pier Paolo Pasolini
It’s a long story. When I was a boy, 18 or 19 years old, for a while I wanted to be a director. Then the war came along and abolished any hope and possibility. I found myself in a series of circumstances: I published my first novel, Ragazzi di Vita, which was rather successful in Italy, and subsequently, I was asked to work on screenplays. When I shot Accattone, it was the first time I laid my hands on a movie camera. I hadn’t even ever taken a photograph. To this day, I cannot take good pictures.
If my film is set in a working class environment, I choose ordinary working men and women, non-professional actors, since I believe it’s impossible for a middle-class actor to pretend to be a peasant or a factory worker. It would sound false in an intolerable way. But if I make a film set in a bourgeois milieu, since I cannot ask a lawyer or an engineer to act for me, then I pick professional actors. Naturally, I’m referring to Italy, how it was ten years ago. If I were in Sweden, I would probably always use actors since there is no difference anymore between a middle class and a working class man there. I’m talking about physical differences; in Italy, there is the same difference between the middle and working class as there is between a
white and a black man. A working class man there. I’m talking about physical differences; in Italy, there is the same difference between the middle and working class as there is between a white and a black man.
Classes are still there but—and this is the Italian peculiarity—the class struggle is on the economic level and not on a cultural one anymore. Between a middle and a working class man the difference is economic, not cultural anymore.
In my writing there are deliberate elements of a naturalistic type of realism and therefore the love for real things...a fusion of traditional academic elements and of contemporary literary movements.
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In no th co th th is th ns co e m ing film sin er m ume bo mm eta bu , zi ist o ris th sm. er c re n m m po die od pho t all sex an I on or a we s ifi r eg i th con ne le nip r. sub cat for ory s e c si ct ss I j io t , las de ion tha ulat th ecte n he r sic co b n es ink d of al n et N an t to re one sum wee azism d v hat ia ally , b er n c . iol in ns, tra ecau ism ons My ates to to d ns se to um fil b no tali the idn form cle be a eri m s odie ric F sm ho s t a tar m. ’t to ian It en Ital- al F asci an ws neita st w te as sm d th liz at a r cis N e in e s a m wo ag o bu r di se dn ne t ’t .
Mamma Roma is more realistic than Accattone, maybe. I should watch it again. It is less accomplished, less beautiful and that’s because it is less dream-like.
In the end, oh I know, never, in my haggard passion, have I ever been such a cadaver as now as I take again in hand my tables of the present— if reality’s real, but after it’s been destroyed in the eternal and the moment by the obsessive idea of a shining nothingness.
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Io so perché sono un intellettuale, uno scrittore, che cerca di seguire tutto ciò che succede, di conoscere tutto ciò che se ne scrive, di immaginare tutto ciò che non si sa o che si tace; che coordina fatti anche lontani, che mette insieme i
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Il potere e il mondo che, pur non essendo del potere, tiene rapporti pratici col potere, ha escluso gli intellettuali liberi - proprio per il modo in cui è fatto - dalla possibilità di avere prove e indizi.
pezzi disorganizzati e frammentari di un intero coerente quadro politico, che ristabilisce la logica là dove sembrano regnare l’arbitrarietà, la follia e il mistero. Tutto ciò fa parte del mio mestiere e dell’istinto del mio mestiere.
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Il tuo posto era al mio fianco, e tu eri orgoglioso di questo. Ma, seduto con il braccio sul volante hai detto: “Io non posso andare avanti. Devo stare qui, da solo. “ Se si rimane in questo villaggio di provincia si cade in una trappola. Lo facciamo tutti. Non so come o quando, ma si farà. Gli anni che compongono una vita svaniscono in un istante. Lei è tranquilla, pensoso. So che è amore che ci sta lacerando. Vi ho dato tutta la potenza della mia esistenza, ma tu sei umile e fiero, obbedendo un destino che vuole a rimanere impoverito. Tu non sai cosa fare, se dare o meno.
Non posso fingere la tua resistenza non mi provoca dolore. Posso vedere il futuro. C’è sangue sulla sabbia. Il vento urlava attraverso la Piazza dei Cinquecento come in una Chiesa, non c’era traccia di sporcizia. Stavo guidando da solo per le strade deserte. Erano quasi le 02:00. Nel piccolo giardino vedo gli ultimi due o tre ragazzi, né romano né dei contadini, di crociera per 1000 lire. I loro volti sono in pietra a freddo. Ma non hanno le palle. Fermai la macchina e chiamai a uno di loro. Era un fascista, giù sulla sua fortuna, e ho faticato di toccare il suo cuore disperato.
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Ma nel buio ho potuto vedermi a guardarlo. Siete venuti con la vostra auto e aveva il vostro divertimento, Paolo. L’individuo degenerato era qui accanto a te. Egli è il vostro letto. Chincaglieria economici rubati pendono dal suo finestrino della macchina. Ora si deve lasciare ma dove si può andare? Lui è sempre lì. Esisteva in questo mondo una cosa senza prezzo. E ‘stato unico. Pochi erano a conoscenza di esso. Nessun codice della Chiesa potrebbe classificarlo. Ho affrontato è a metà strada nel cammino della vita senza guida a condurmi attraverso questo inferno.
Alla fine non aveva senso in esso tho consumato tutta la mia realtà. Volevi distruggere qualsiasi bene che è venuto da esso, lentamente, lentamente, con le mani delicate. Non sono state dedicate e ancora non riesco a capire perché c’era tanta furia nella tua anima contro un amore che era così casto. Dopo molte piangendo, in segreto e di fronte a voi, dopo aver messo in scena molti atti di disperazione, hai fatto la decisione finale di arrendersi e per non essere mai più visto. Mi sono fatto. Ho agito come un pazzo. Non lasciare scorrere l’acqua dalla fonte del mio male
e il mio bene: questi patti tra uomini non sono per voi o forse sei troppo abile nell’arte di romperle, guidati da un genio che ti dà la certezza da cui si trasfigurato. voi conoscere il tasto destro per spingere. Quando parlo tu mi dici “no” e tremo con disgusto e rabbia al pensiero delle nostre ore felici indimenticabili. Dopo una lunga assenza, ho messo su un disco di Bach, inalare la terra profumata nel giardino, penso che ancora una volta di poesie e romanzi da scrivere e torno il silenzio della pioggia mattina, l’inizio del mondo di domani. Intorno a me ci sono
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i fantasmi dei primi ragazzi, quelli che conoscevi. Ma questo è finito. La loro giornata è passato e, come me, rimangono lontani dalla vetta dove il sole ha reso gloriosa la testa, coronata con quegli assurdi tagli di capelli in stile moderno e quei jeans brutti americani che schiacciano i genitali. Si ride al mio Bach e dici di essere compassionevole. Parli parole di ammirazione per i miei fratelli abbattuti della sinistra. Ma nella tua risata c’è il rifiuto assoluto di tutto ciò che sono. Penso a te e dico a me stesso: “Io l’ho perso.” Non riesco a sopportare il dolore e desiderio fossi morto. Un minuto...
‘’The sexual freedom of today for most people is really only a convention, an obligation, a social duty, a social anxiety, a necessary feature of the consumer’s way of life.’’
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My lack of professional experience has not encouraged me to invent. Rather it has urged me to “re-invent.” For instance, I never studied at the Centro Sperimentale or any other school, and so when the time came for me to shoot a panoramic shot, for me it was like the first time in the history of cinema that a panorama was shot. And so I re-invented the panoramic. Only a person with a great deal of professional experience is capable of inventing technically. As far as technical inventions go, I have never made any.
I may have invented a given style—in fact, my films are recognizable for a particular style— but style does not always imply technical inventions. Godard is full of technical inventions. In Alphaville there are four or five things that are completely invented—for example those shots printed in negative. Certain technical rulebreakings of Godard are the result of a pains -taking personal study.
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There is a lot of sex in it, rather towards Sado-Masochism, which has a very specific function - that is to reduce the human body to a saleable commodity. It represents what power does to the human being, to the human body. All my films start from a formal idea, which I feel I must do. It is an idea I have of the kind of film it must be. It cannot be expressed in words, you either understand it or you don’t. When I make a film, it because I suddenly have an inspiration about the form of that particular subject must take. That is the essence of the film. As I shoot this film, I already have it edited in my mind. Therefore, I expect a greater professional ability from my actors. So, this film I’m using 4 or 5 professional actors. But even the ones I have collected from the streets, I use them almost as if they were professional actors. The lines have to be said properly, the way they
were written, and all in one take. They must have the correct facial expression from the beginning to the end of the shot, etc etc. My need to make this film also came from the fact I particularly hate the leaders of the day. Each one of us hates with particular vehemence the powers to which he is forced to submit. So, I hate the powers of today. It is a power that manipulates people just as it did at the time of Himmler or Hitler.
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I never dared to try experiments of this kind, because I have no technical background. And so my first step was to simplify the technique. This is contradictory, because as a writer I tend to be extremely complicated—that is, my written page is technically very complex. While I was writing Una Vila Violente— technically very complex—I was shooting Accattone, which was technically very simple. This is the principal limitation of my cinematic career, because I believe that an author must have complete knowledge of all his technical instruments. A partial knowledge is a limitation. Therefore, at this particular moment, I believe that the first period of my cinematic work is about to close. And the second period is about to start, in which I will be a professional director also as far as technique in concerned. In this important change, the selection of non-actors will be one of the most important structural aspects.
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Probably the structure of this high level cinema will be modified by the fact that no longer will there be an industrial organization hanging over it. And so all kinds of experiments will be possible, including that of using non-actors, and this will transform the cinema even stylistically.
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I think of you and I say to myself: “I have lost him.� I cannot bear the pain and wish I were dead. A minute or so passes and I reconsider. With joy I take back strength from your image. I refuse to cry. My mind is changed. Then again I consider you, lost and alone.
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I think of you and I say to myself: “I have lost him.� I cannot bear the pain and wish I were dead. A minute or so passes and I reconsider. With joy I take back strength from your image. I refuse to cry. My mind is changed. Then again I consider you, lost and alone.
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I yo do o u It u to n n’t d g th sh is i t m s t a to ip w mp y ab ha and y w peo ink ue tall ith oss ili ve th ill ple the s c y n t ibl ty n is un o an ew hem e t to o fi d f no v , o c infl illu lm ert b alu be re u sio . I e e ca ate en n sh com s, w use a c ce y s h all pa ith th ult ou so ave ev red wh ey a ura ng p m ciet any er . I ich re l l re eo iv la p d en y wi in form agai on’t the ing tion le. n o ll be ld wi be wh of lie v th i fre ch ve ale. we
ab
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Ali the Blue Eyes one of many sons of sons, fall from Algiers on ships sailing and rowing . will with him thousands of men with little bodies and eyes of poor dogs of fathers on boats launched in the Realms of Fame. With them will be children , and the bread and cheese, wrapped in the yellow Easter Monday . They will bring the grandmothers and asses , on the triremes stolen from the colonial ports . Or land at Crotone in Palmi , millions, clad in rags Asian and American shirts . Immediately tell the Calabresi , how to be Marauders Marauders : “That’s the old brothers , their children, and the bread and cheese! “ From Crotone or Palmi they will in Naples , and from there to Barcelona, in Thessaloniki and in Marseille, in Cities of the Underworld . Souls and angels, mice and lice, with the seed of Ancient History will fly in front of the willaye . They always humble They always weak they always timid they always infinitesimally they always guilty they always submissive they always small , that they never wanted to know , that they had eyes only to implore, they who lived as assassins under the earth, that they lived like bandits at the bottom of the sea, they who lived like crazy in the middle of the sky ,
they who created laws outside the law , that they adapted to a world beneath the world they believed that in a God servant of God, that they were singing the slaughter of kings , they were dancing bourgeois wars , that they prayed the workers’ struggles ... Deposing the honesty ... peasant religions , forgetting the honor of the underworld , betraying candor of the barbarian peoples , behind their Ali Blue Eyes - come out from under the earth to kill come out of the bottom of the sea to attack - will drop from the sky to rob - and before coming to Paris to teach the joy of living , before coming to London to teach people to be free, before arriving in New York, to teach as we have Brothers - Destroy Rome and on its ruins will lay the germ of Ancient History . Then with the Pope and all the sacraments will go up as gypsies towards the north- west with red flags Trotsky in the wind ...
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They always humble They always weak they always timid they always infinitesimally they always guilty they always submissive they always small.
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What is it that urges me to create. As far as film is concerned, there is no difference between film and literature and poetrythere is this same feeling that I have never gone into deeply. I began to write poetry when I was seven years old, and what it was that made me write poetry at the age of seven I have never understood. Perhaps it was the urge to express oneself and the urge to bear witness of the world and to partake in or to create an action in which we are involved, to engage oneself in that act. Putting the question in that manner forces me to give you a vaguely spiritualistic answer . . . a bit irrational. It makes me feel a bit on the defensive.
In my writing there are deliberate elements of a naturalistic type of realism and therefore the love for real things . . . a fusion of traditional academic elements and of contemporary literary movements.
h h tra istor di is in it ge y, fr ffe ter co was dy. cho fo iend rent ior a n ura ea Bu ice m r a , v . So life g s t i r T a e e an ke V ry m (w N je orm e an ier t let’s s alw e c h y h an o a st fri on e a t al d e ad a us d s ne. livin atio end e m re th zi o a Fa man con n. W mi ys a f of all ubj Pow g s n). ly igh e r th scis ca sci it t it, us , fr ect er om Th and t ev e S t o n enc h c o a . Th om ed is e e h r p om lu S, f S lw e, at’ th . N an ow eas olit e w tion eve alò ays n o s w e s eve ed , a on e, a hy o-c rth uca nd ing but lkin alwa from r a ev alle ele tio the go he g t ys er d ss, na n es is ow be y in one ruli it i l sy beca tha a “c ard gins t ac h w ng s a ste us t fi ol yo ). co ces e sa ant clas n ed m th e its rst o labo u d But m un s to me s t s a uc at n f a ra re to O ane cil o an wa he s ll th atio div ot li ll h tor” ssed day An the uve r a ad y. I am e w nal ide ke e n (le lik it’s d rwi r, t St mi f I e th ay sy s u he’ eed t’s e a wh se h oc ni ha in d ste s i s h s sa en I u at’s k M stra ve gs ow m nto ur to y an n t th su tin I u se wh ar tiv d o at b g se a c at ke e ev th fo jec a c row I u t er e p rm ts yo o s ro b se. wb ar. ne or ar, ac est ts
It tu sis ’s th ian rni b .I eI A s ng a d eing taly tali gr ll th are the it ev an sw an “ ar adu e o goi m i if a e s n e n t i a wi lik lly he g to t x o ll ha lope und tly grow t t e a r to h e rd pas th b c hr b k r pp d we de con the egu oun oug illio ing seve ene cou eve sed ” cr to ar al w spi Th n t tri h a nai a p n y d w ntr lop fro iki e h ith rac ird o [ es i pe res oo ear it y. A ed m l ll er us e th ies Wo ose nste riod . Th r fam s. It hin nd to ? I tal e t be rld th ad i ey i ’s fiv n t’s ki ru cau , ei w ly li e ea ng th se pre r id are wh ou an ke , sy, , s he th -d en eit ich ld d it’s om ad ey eve tit her th los e o e l i jo sim one n. W relie ope es] i alre eir i the k d a p n d v p e le in o e . t d e ir th ain, abo , an the uld us o We he y de ntit iden “h en th ut d b n’t f ar pas ve y is ti ke ave too e w the it’s t asem it b the e pa t tw lope be ty. I th eps a c pa ork blo he en e w wei rtic o c d a ing talat o h id th od re t g u e n l ho ne oic w at , sis we ond ht o lar ntu d h ost. ur ’s f e”. ith pe the tan re erf f h ly p rie av , t ac W so op ce ma ul av le s o e ha e fl h a le . [ ki if, in as r t m at en s t ... ng w g ed ]L p h in aga on o et’ lan ile ut in e sn s e i st n ot
I’ll use whatever means to get what I want. Why do I want it? Because I’ve been told that it is a virtue to have it. I am merely exercising my virtue-rights. I am a murderer but I am a good person. It’s like it rains in the city and the gutters are backed up. The water rises, but the water is innocent, it’s rainwater. It has neither the fury of sea, nor the rage of river current. But, for some reason, it rises instead of falling. It’s the same water of so many adolescent poems and of the cutesy songs like “singing in the rain”. But it rises and it drowns you. If that’s where we are, I say let’s not waste time placing nametags here and there. Let’s see then how we can unplug this tub before we all drown. It’s the Italian “growth” crisis. Italy swiftly passed from being an underdeveloped to a developed country. And it all happened within five, six or seven years. It’s like taking a poor family and turning them into billionaires. They would lose their identity. Italians are going
through a period in which their identity is being lost. All the other countries instead are either already developed and have gradually begun to [lose their identities] in the past two centuries or are like the Third World, pre-developed. We are particularly pleased with conspiracies because they relieve us of the weight of having to deal with the truth head on. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, while we are here talking, someone in the basement were making plans to kill us? It’s easy, it’s simple, and it’s the resistance. [...] Let’s not joke about the blood, the pain, the work that people then too paid with so as to “have a choice”. When one keeps one’s face flat against that hour, that minute in history, choice is always a tragedy. But let’s admit it, it was easier then. With courage and conscience, a normal man can always reject a Fascist of Salò or a Nazi of the SS, even from his interior life (where the revolution always begins). But today it’s different.
Someone might come walking toward you dressed like a friend, very friendly and polite, but he is a “collaborator” (let’s say for a TV station). The reasoning goes that first of all he needs to make a living somehow, and then because its not like he’s hurting anyone.
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I go down into hell, and I see things that do not disturb the peace of others. But be careful. Hell is rising toward the rest of you.
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Through an epileptic impulse of homicidal grief, I was protesting like someone sentenced to life imprisonment, locking myself in my room, without anybody else knowing, to scream, mouth stuffed with the blankets darkened by the burns of the irons, the dear blankets of the family, on which I was brooding over the flowers of my youth. And one afternoon, or one evening, I ran, screaming, through the streets of Sunday, after the game, to the old cemetery, there, beyond the railroad tracks, and performed, and repeated, till I bled, the sweetest act of life, I alone, on the little pile of earth,
the graves of two or three Italian or German soldiers, no names on the woodplank crosses buried there since the other war. And that night, amid my dry tears, the bleeding bodies of those poor unknowns dressed in olive drab appeared in a cluster above my bed where I was sleeping, naked and emptied, to smear me with blood till the sun rose. I was twenty, no, less eighteen, nineteen...and a century had already passed
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since my birth, an entire lifetime consumed in the pain of the idea that I would never be able to give my love except to my hand, or the grassy ditches, or perhaps the earth of an unguarded grave... Twenty years, and, with its human history, and its cycle of poetry, a life had ended. No names on the wood-plank crosses buried there since the other war.
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At this point, the cinema is dividing itself into really two large trunks, and these two different types of films correspond to what we already have in literature: that is, one type on a high level and another type on a low level. While cinema production until now has given us films of both a high and low level, the distribution apparatus has been the same for both. But now the organization or structure of the cinema industry is starting to differenti-
ate...the cinema d’essai is becoming more important and will soon represent a channel for distribution through which certain films will be distributed, whereas the remainder of the distribution will take place normally. This will bring about the birth of two completely different cinemas. The high level of cinema—that is, the cinema d’essai—will cater to a selected public and will have its own history. And the other level will have its own story. XXXVI
Bunch of Grapes I dreamed that I was eating grapes one berry at a time from a plump green bunch, a man’s entire destiny his misfortunes in those freshly picked grapes as old as the world in the dream, I’m the one eating the grapes with a mouth that laughs in despair, a pitiful sight, because it’s been tricked by the dark dream and it must laugh as it chews the infected berry I crunch it between my teeth reluctantly because when one dies, or eats, shame will follow as if I had scabies, I gobble down its immobile grains stuck in the glimmer that descends on the dead in the white, dry, limestone glimmer that never dies, I see Casarsa before me and I am a child in stockings and sweater that cover my trembling flesh the poor little, big house with flies on its greased table empty and tired, its courtyard well walkways and fields are burning in the blaze of the sun
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wrought-iron beds in its rooms white bedcovers that smell of old fleas that died in the time of my aunts and uncles when poverty gnawed even the branches of the fig-tree in the sun-burnt garden there, in the middle of it all, I, a forgotten little featherless swallow, felt the sin like the heat and kept it under my scorching skin as great as the world that burned in Casarsa The Tagliamento, with its asphalt road and green pastures like the dried forests and the yellow fields of corn between the sea and the mountains: everything burned in my childhood flesh, an aching flame
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If I then discovered a cancer in myself and died, I’d consider it a victory of that reality of things.
Once life is finished it acquires a sense; up to that point it has not got a sense; its sense is suspended and therefore ambiguous.
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His mutilated body was found in a vacant lot in Ostia, a suburb of Rome, in 1975. The assumed killer (who later recanted his confession) was a 17-year-old male prostitute he had picked up, named Pino “The Frog� Pelosi.
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