User reviews

Accattone is a relentless study of the suffering that accompanies poverty. Pasolini utilises the well worn techniques of the Italian neo-realist moment to represent the depressing and oppressive life of a pimp - Accattone (played by the astonishing Franco Citti) - in the slums of post-war Rome. His life is beleaguered by guilt and self-disgust; his occupation, which is ostensibly the exploitation of women, causes the titular character untold despair. Ultimately he is unable to rationalise his need to eat with the suffering he causes to the women who work for him; they are, after all, also his lovers. Yet, Pasolini is careful to maintain the humanity of his protagonist by representing his hopeless situation as equally a result of his own doings as that of the social environment. Pasolini's Accattone is a masterful debut which expertly calls into service the devices of the cinema to convey a depressing but also compassionate narrative. His style is equal parts poetry and melodrama; a tough combo for any director. Some moments of this film are as tragically lyrical as those to be found in a film by Robert Bresson or Roberto Rossellini. Accattone is a commendable combination of style and substance which will leave few viewers unaffected.

Just to start with, Accattone was not filmed in Naples but in Rome. Someone might have brought to that understanding by some Neapolitans gangsters that appear at some point in the movie As for the "ruins" that scatter the landscape, they are mostly buildings that will soon replace the barracks such as the one in which Accattone lives, or the Acquedotto Felice, an ancient Roman aqueduct that runs close to Prenestina and Casilina, two Roman suburbs, that you can see in Mamma Roma as well. Franco Citti, the character of Accattone, perfectly embodies the roman lumpenproletariat of the time: idle, fatalistic and desperate. Pasolini met Franco's brother Sergio, a plasterer, hanging around Cinecittà in 1951. He introduced him to his brother Franco that became Pasolini's dialectical adviser for Accattone, Mamma Roma and his book "Ragazzi di vita"; his "living vocabulary" as he called him. Indeed, Pasolini interests for dialects and slangs (Roman is not really a dialect anymore but a slang) was not disappointed. The dialogues between the characters are full of fantasy: rude and in some way reminiscent of their peasant past. A must see if you're interested in Neorealism and in the "ways of the underworld lumpenproletariat". Someone connected this movie with Bunuel's "Los Olvidados". I definitely agree.

Accattone is a Neo-Realist examination of slovenly irresponsibility, tastelessness and self-pity - you know, the fun stuff. Its principal characters, a group of young upwardly-immobile Roman males, are almost uniformly repulsive, a lot of chest-baring half-savages whose idea of fun is luring a whore to a deserted spot and beating her to within an inch of her life. Its hero, Accattone, is played by one of the more unpleasant actors in the history of film, a fellow named Franco Citti, who manages to single-handedly set the entire nation of Italy back about two-hundred years. It is a film of almost relentless despair, depicting a Rome so desolate and squalid, so bereft of hope, that it seems almost medieval. In the hands of almost any director the movie would be unbearable - either unbearably sentimental or unbearably grim - but with Pasolini at the helm it is merely honest.

It isn't Pasolini's best film by a long way, but it may be the clearest example of what made the director so special - his ability to probe around the most revolting recesses of the human condition without seeming sensationalistic, exploitive or crass. It would be easy to go one of two directions with a character like Accattone, a lazy two-bit pimp with a son by a woman who wants nothing to do with him: the sentimental route or the grotesque. One could easily imagine De Sica, the soft-heart of Neo-Realism, turning Accattone into a sympathetic, misunderstood Everyman. And one could just as easily imagine Fellini, the most uptight director maybe in history, transforming the character into a universal symbol of societal decay. Pasolini, neither a sentimentalist nor a moralist, sees Accattone not as a sympathetic character nor as a symbol. The least judgmental director maybe ever, Pasolini conceives his characters entirely in terms of their outward behavior, and not in moral terms. He neither psycho-analyzes nor seeks to "understand" his characters. He simply presents them as they are, warts and all.

It was always the purpose of Neo-Realism to present life as it was lived, not life as it was imagined by screenwriters, directors and actors, and there are few more successful ventures in this regard than Accattone. The film's main triumph is in its atmosphere. The Roman days have never seemed so sun-bleached, so arid and oppressive; its nights never so mysterious, so full of inexpressible longing (not even in Henry James). The characters seem bound to this world in a palpable way, their faces (shot by expert cinematographer Tonino Delli Colli) mirroring the desolation, the hopelessness, the strangeness of their surroundings. The movie's physicality, as always with Pasolini, is striking. But pure physical vigor, pure atmosphere isn't enough. Where Pasolini comes up short is in assembling the parts of his film into something with real emotional breadth. His first feature shows him already on his way to being a master of the image, but also shows that he had a lot to learn about being a master of cinematic rhythm. The strange blend of primitivism and modernism is already there but the command is not. It's a film that works well in the moment but feels thin as a whole. It's a triumph of Neo-Realist technique but it only half-succeeds as a film.

Half-successful Pasolini is still better than the best most directors have to give. If you can portray a character as repulsive, as boorish and ego-maniacal as Accattone - a character with few if any redeeming features - for two hours without alienating your audience...well, chalk one up for the director who can do that. Especially one who manages the trick without resorting to sentimental contrivance or the kind of false significance people like Fellini always tried to drum up by filling their movies with obvious symbols, the sorts of things art-film zombies love because it gives them a chance to show their alleged smarts. Pasolini never flatters his audience but he never sneers at them either. He attempts to neither ingratiate himself with the public nor antagonize it in the manner of certain self-important avant-gardists. The best artists look for what interests them in a piece of material, not worrying whether their ideas, their approach, their style is accessible to the public at large, or critics, or scholars, or their grandmothers or anyone else. Accattone shows Pasolini on the road that would make him one of cinema's best directors - a road traveled by precisely one person, Pasolini himself.

This is still a masterpiece of a film you can not afford not to see if you like Pasolini. "Accattone" is the directorial debut of the Italian neo-realist, Pier Paolo Pasolini, but by a strange coincidence it ended up being the very last of all his movies that I saw. I had seen everything he ever did, including short films by the time I got to "Accatone" and still found it masterful.

Franco Citti stars as the title character, he is a handsome pimp in Rome's post-war lower depths, with an endearing face that speaks volumes of his street-wise upbringing in the slums. To those unaccustomed with Southern Italian culture the way he spends his days with the other local pimps, playing cards and being lazy may seem vile, but it is actually a well grounded tradition, as is also his support of the entire family of his imprisoned friend, Ciccio, who depend on him for survival. He is obviously a fellow mobster, and their code of honor is at stake when Accatone discovers that he is in prison as a result of his whore, Maddalena, played by Silvana Corsini, who denounced Ciccio to the authorities. Even though she is recovering from a broken leg, Accatone forces her to go on the streets, where she is used, beaten and abandoned by Accatone's pals after he tells them the story, then she is found by the police and arrested. Accattone nearly starves to death from the total lack of income, he even sells all his jewelry to get by. He tries to reunite with his wife, with whom he has fathered at least one child, but she sees through his seduction act and her virile, beautiful brother beats up Accatone in an intense erotically-charged scene that seems to simulate sexual assault as much as violence between the men.

After meeting the innocent and beautiful Stella, (Franca Pasut) he is smitten and tries to get a job, so he can support her and his family but he is not accustomed to hardship and has the lack of patience that is typical of spoilt types that have never been trained to work does not make the job last for very long.

Never have I seen a more humane, direct and simple depiction of the tragic life of these undesirables of society. Pasolini is a master painter narrating with a few gestures all their hardship and suffering. Even getting a plate of food in this world is a memorable accomplishment. We see the whole setting as a sideline of modern society's inability to function properly. The 'corrections' by the police seem to be the most unjust of all, and Pasolini presents this panorama of human failing as an allegory of human struggle and spiritual redemption.

Accattone is a Roman pimp who lives off his girlfriend Maddalena's earnings. Pasolini's cheeky aim is to put forward this young man as a modern saint. To this end he lathers Bach's St Matthew's Passion (inspired by the Apostle's experience of the crucifixion of Christ) over scenes of Accattone's life. Indeed in one of Accattone's first scenes he's shown devouring a slice of tomato, displayed horizontally as if a cardinal's galero, whilst an sculpture of perhaps a guardian angel can be seen over his shoulder in the distance (an anti-clerical pro-Christ stance seems to be a consistent theme for Pasolini). Later, a prophecy regarding Accattone's descent is eerily similar to Christ's pronunciation of Peter's forthcoming triple renunciation.

The film reminded me of a DH Lawrence poem (elliptically titled Democracy):

"I love the sun in any man / when I see it between his brows / clear, and fearless, even if tiny // But when I see these grey successful men / so hideous and corpse-like, utterly sunless, / like gross successful slaves mechanically waddling / then I am more than radical, I want to work a guillotine

...

I feel that when people have gone utterly sunless / they shouldn't exist."

Whatever Accattone is, he's not sunless; when he tries out the world of work (legitimate work involving labour), he becomes Vittorio, his Christian name, and the light goes out. The film reminds me very much of Fassbinder's Gods of the Plague in that sense, young men with brio but no skills or education who, given the choice, between drudgery or crime, choose crime. Both films polemicise against urban post-industrial capitalist societies, which have become increasingly removed from the milieu in which humanity evolved and is "designed" to cope with. When Accattone compares the chore of lifting rolls of iron with the horrors of Buchenwald the film goes a little over the top.

Of course someone viewing Accattone and his friends through less of a haze of desire than the director might think that they were just a bunch of jerks. Undeniably though, Pasolini is a great poet, and there's evidence of things to come here, the film whilst looking largely Bertoluccian (he was the assistant director), has the occasional master shot, for example the rolling hills and valley in the dream sequence, par with Leonardo in quality of composition and symbolism; the countryside here representing an idealised rural precursor to Accattone's slum existence.

I also applaud Pasolini for taking his arguments beyond class, Accattone's group of spongers contains educated men as well as dunces, and they are equally disdainful of the ruling class as they are of proletarians.

If you see this film you will agree with me that Rome of 50s was equal to any other developing country, with the same miseries, hunger and needs of any least developed nation in the world. Prostitution and unemployment were characteristics in Rome of those days. Accatone is a young lazy guy, living of what he can earn in a day but not working, i.e. stealing anything he finds and using illegally nice ladies as prostitutes. One day he decided to start working, but it was too hard for him, so he came back doing the same as in the past, stealing and smuggling anywhere. The film is spoken in Romanacio dialect, so I suspect that even for some Italians in the North this film has to be dubbed to the Italian (Toscana dialect) language, otherwise they would not understand it properly. It is also a possibility to see poor parts of the city and new built areas. The river Tevere was not as polluted as it is now because the Romans used to swim in it.

The term 'accattone' is an old Italian phrase intended to brand a character with an aura of absolute repulsiveness. Thieves and low-lives would usually coin the term when referring to a character that is so despicable, so without moral or social decency, that even the criminals would look down upon them. In Pier Paolo Pasolini's incredibly assured debut, 'Accattone' is Vittorio (Franco Citti), a low-life pimp who when he is not sitting around squeezing money out of people with wagers and tricks, is abusing his lone prostitute who cannot work after breaking her leg in a motorcycle accident. It's a tale of a despicable scumbag, set during a dark period in Rome, where men viewed working as slave labour, and enjoyed themselves by beating prostitutes to within an inch of their life.

It's an incredibly bleak tale, told without sentiment and moral preaching. Pasolini's doesn't seem to want to dictate a larger social message, or make Accattone a sympathetic character who is the victim of political or social oppression, but to simply tell a tale, a real tale, of a group of low-lives who are the way they are because they want to be. After all, the true soul of neo-realism is to portray life the way actual people experience it, not to romanticise or sentimentalise it with the kind of scripts Hollywood are responsible for. Of course, many neo-realist directors would almost betray the genres roots the kind of way only auteurs can manage, and Pasolini would go on to make more surrealistic and interpretive movies, but this is true neo-realism without any kind of magical reward for the audience, or a moment of redemptive enlightenment for its protagonist. It's a story of grit, one that is thrilling and fascinating in equal measures, and with the stamp of a great director.

The film I felt it more akin to is Luis Bunuel's Los Olvidados (1950), a film of equal disregard for cinematic wonder, and one that is also punctured by an impressive dream sequence. Whilst Bunuel's sequence came around the middle section, and was a burst of absolute surrealistic beauty amongst social depravity, Accattone's comes during its climax; a strange, moody set-piece in which Accattone witnesses his own funeral, amongst other things. At first I felt like it was almost betraying what came before, but then I realised it was Pasolini's way to try and get into its characters head, and the outcome is as confusing and as futile as Accattone himself. Though I haven't seen much of Pasolini's work, this is the best I've seen, beating even the distressing brilliance of his final film Salo (1975). Though he would move away from neo-realism, Pasolini achieves more with his debut than some of the greats of the genre would manage to achieve.

www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

Although I am not the biggest fan of Italian movies, I found Pasolini's Accattone to be quite raw gritty and well done. The story focuses on one man's plight in a thing called life in Italy. Trying to eke out a living by any means possible (which in his terms means practically doing nothing at all) Accattone essentially pimps out all the beautiful women he comes involves in, and when that doesn't work, is forced into manual labor. Pasolini does a commendable job here, filling his screen with Naples in the raw (well, from what I understand, Naples isn't exactly the most glamorous city to begin with), and does wonders with his mostly amateur cast. Although the film does run a wee bit too long for my tastes, this all in all, is a very good movie, one of which would be of interest to fans of Italin Neo-realist films.

Accattone announces a director, Pier Paolo Pasolini, who is a haunting/haunted poet from his surroundings and realist, someone who wants to put his eye on the world without flinching on the details of how 'ordinary' (of the street) people speak and interact, how raw and uninhibited they can be, these being the guys on the streets who are vulgar and coarse at best and at worst are abusers of women. But at the same time what one comes away with is poetry in documentary form - it's another level of neo-realism, a little more like an urban story than a post-war treatise that still throbs with the importance of those in poverty. Anytime I hear the song Matthaus Passion I'll immediately contemplate those harsh images of Vittorio Accattone, being cast aside by his family for being a pimp, or that poor girl being beaten at night by that gang of men, which is something that elevates such hard scenes into art.

Vittorio Accattone is the main character- charming and attractive, and also a perpetual scoundrel who also is a total outcast. He has a wife and kid(s), but is estranged from them by choice - her choice most likely - and he finds himself in big trouble once his main prostitute, Maddalena, is sent to prison for a bad informing job. It's after this we see Accatone on his potential path to redemption when he meets a supremely sweet and average girl from out of town, Stella, who he may eye as a new girl on the street... or perhaps not, as his attachment to her grows more and stronger, in spite of what and who are around him every day and night in the dirty province.

He's someone we want to root for in being a better person, or, perhaps even, better at what he does. He's a tragic anti-hero in a New-Wave sort of sense, cool looking and aspiring to be modern and cool (and maybe he is, up to a point), but also poor and uneducated, so much so that being on the fringe and being called "PIMP!" is what he's been reduced to by default. The performance from Franco Citti is one thing that keeps the viewer locked in: he's so good here because he looks plucked right off the street by Pasolini, as would turn to be his method with choosing most of his 'actors' on camera. There's a reality to his interactions with his friends (so called) or his business associates. Some of their dialog and tones of speech aren't refined or look trained. At one point when Citti's Vittorio breaks down in tears- a sudden turn from a previous scene showing more attitude- is authentic, even as another actor could have possibly played it "better".

It is what Pasolini wants, and he gets it, much in the same way he also gets a view of this side of Rome in a way that hasn't been seen before up until this time. His DP Tonino Delli Colli shoots simply often, and sometimes not so much - there's complexity, say, to a tracking shot in front of Accatone talking to a girl who is on a bicycle, or when we see the horrorshow of the men taking Maddalena at night in the middle of nowhere, the only lights starkly coming from the car. The effect is nothing short of a slow-burn. While a few of the actors do fall a bit too flat, and some scenes come close to lagging around (the editing might be the most significant flaw here), the raw emotion and fire in the subject matter keeps things fascinating. You want to see what happens with this young guy, and it's his tragedy that gets us absorbed, even as the Bach music abstracts the sorrow, and agonizing poetry of the streets, and it's this that makes it a classic.

Only downside I must mention - if you live in the US, or happen to watch it on a DVD or online from Walter Bearer films, the print is just not very good. It's the sort where the white subtitles drop in and out of view depending on who's standing where in a frame. It's not totally detrimental, but some scenes become hard to follow due to the poor quality of the subtitles with the print. This, if for no other reason, demands the film receive the Criteron treatment.

Pier Paolo Pasolini is without any doubt a great director, but to be honest I am not a big fan of his later symbolic work.

Only recently I saw his first two films of a more realist nature, and these were more to my taste.

Both "Accattone" (1961) and "Mamma Roma" (1962) are based on Pasolini's experiences in the slums of Rome as documented in his novels "Ragazzi di vita" (1955) and "Una vita violenta" (1959).

"Accattone" was the first film of the two, but with respect to the storyline it could be the sequel of "Mamma Roma". In this interpretation the chartacter of Accattone (Franco Citti) is the son of Mamma Roma (Ettore Garofolo) at a later age. Another way of linking the films together is equating Accattone with the character of Carmine, Mamma Roma's former pimp. For this interpretation argues that both characters are played by Franco Citti.

Both "Mamma Roma" and "Accattone" are seen as late Neo Realist movies. I do think Pasolini was not very pleased with this categorisation. In my opinion "Mamma Roma" really is a Neo Realist movie with a former prostitute working very hard to become a member of the midde class. She can be seen as a victim of poverty. "Accattone" is different. His main character ( a pimp) is not working very hard to become middle class. In effect he is not working at all but prefers that a girl works for him. "Accatone" is in this respect more akin to "I vitelloni" (1953, Federico Fellini).

The soundtrack is dominated by the St Matthes passion of Bach. Three years later Pasolini would make "Il vangelo secondo Matteo" (1964). In "Accattone" the music is harder to understand because Accettone is defintely not a saint.

In the poor periphery of Rome of the 60's, the despicable caftan Vittorio "Accattone" Cataldi (Franco Citti) is maintained by the hooker Maddalena (Silvana Corsini), spending the time with his useless idle friends. When the prostitute is arrested for perjury, the pimp "Accattone" has nobody to support him, but he seduces the naive worker Stella (Franca Pasut) and she becomes a whore. However, Accattone has a crush on Stella and decides to find a way to support her, with tragic consequences.

"Accattone" is the stunning debut of the great director Pier Paolo Pasolini. He returns to the theme of the misery of Italy in the postwar, explored in many Italian neo-realist movies such as Fellini's "Le Notti di Cabiria" (1957) and Visconti's "Rocco e i Suoi Fratelli" (1960), and magnificently shows the lifestyle of great part of the population in Italy, its lower class, with lack of perspective, starvation, prostitution and unemployment. Considering that this movie is also the debut or the beginning of the career of most actors and actresses, it is amazing how Pasolini was able to make such gem. My vote is nine.

Title (Brazil): "Accattoni – Desajuste Social" ("Accattoni – Social Maladjustment")

The eponymous creature (Franco Citti) is a bit of a malevolent sponge. Hs has deserted his wife and child so he can sit with his mates carousing and playing cards whilst he pimps out "Maddalena" (Silvana Corsini) and lives off her ill-gotten gains. He's quite content with this arrangement until she has an altercation with a Vespa and then finds herself rather unjustly locked up for a year. With his income dried up, he has to make some changes. He's ill equipped to get himself a job, and isn't really motivated either. Until, that is, he meets the wandering "Stella" (Franca Pasut). There are certain similarities between her and his incarcerated meal ticket, but she's no hooker nor anywhere near as green as he'd initially thought. He gradually starts to fall for her but can he sort himself out and jettison the worst elements of his past before she tells him to take a run and jump? Though it's hardly a jolly affair, I found this first of his movies to be one of Pasolini's merrier affairs that allows some humour to pepper a narrative of exploitation and manipulation. There's little doubt that the "Accattone" is a pretty odious man, but as the film moves along there's a sense that begins to creep in that he's not beyond redemption - and both the intimate photography and the engaging talent of the boyish Citti help bring that out slowly but surely. Pasut and Corsini both play well with parts that are gritty, earthy and devoid of anything that might really offer them any hope, and on the sidelines his young son "Iaio" (Danilo Alleva) often serves as the most of unlikely of anchors for his selfish father. There's always space for a comment on the place of the church in society, and here there's a distinct parody being drawn between sainthood and, well you decide... Hardly ever seen these days but well worth a couple of hours to see a Rome that Nero might well have been proud of.

don't be a fool, this movie is not about pimps! It is about the periphery of Rome during the post-war years and the better life that capitalism created for the masses yet fundamentally forgot about these denizens of the borgate. If you like contradictions, dichotomies and are a film of uber-neo-realism, read this film. The protagonist, Accattone, is yes a pimp, but he is a pimp because that is how he is rendered through society. Pasolini gives a weird sort of dignity to the slummy atmosphere and seedy characters that reside in it. Christological imagery is prevalent!!! If you are mildly cognizant of Renaissance and Baroque art, you will see what I am talking about.

This just might be the greatest movie I've ever seen. There are two key elements here: the first is Pasolini's genius. Martin Scorcese, or however his name is spelt, is, was, and always will be the poor mans poor mans poor mans Pasolini. Pasolini's subtleness, his understanding of human nature... where does one stop? The second incredible element is that Citti is LANGUID CHARISMA personified. I used to think Jimmy Coburn was the king of such effortless charisma, but I've never seen a performance like this in my life. And I believe the cast were all pretty much amateurs also.

Bach's genius is used hauntingly, in many ways this provides a link to his movie on Our Lord. This is just too beautiful a movie experience for words. I joined IMDb today solely to comment on what I consider to the worst movie I ever saw, two nights ago, called 'love actually'. Well, Accattone is probably the best.

(1961) Accattone (In Italian with English subtitles) ART HOUSE/ NEO-REALISM DRAMA

Co-written and directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini starring Franco Citti as the title character, Vittorio "Accattone" Cataldi as a pimp, showcasing how he mistreats some of his girlfriends, like Maddalena (Silvana Corsini) as well as some of his friends. Accattone's life is sometimes also used as a backdrop to showcase some of the existing slums that exist within Italy's back country post-war, as well as the hard labor some blue collar workers have to endure to make a living. The theme is much like "The Bicycle Thief".

Pasolini's first film "Accatone" is exactly as one would expect a typical Pasolini film to be: wreathed in raw violence, and shot with a brilliant sense of poetic slash brutal realism, reminiscent of the neo-realism era, and perhaps, if not for sure, a semi-autobiographical portrait of life in the streets of Rome's peripheries. "Accatone" is, at its best, a chunk of life, which Pasolini managed to extract not as it initially was, but dramatically filtered through his own personal lyrical gaze. Gangs, prostitutes, lies and deceit lie in this film's core. A sense of irresponsible opportunism is seen in this film, almost no regrets for the past and no fears for the future. In fact, the movie's tragic hero, Vittorio Accatone, is a dark alter-ego of yet another favored Italian movie character, embodied only a year before by Marcello Mastroianni in "La Dolce Vita". Perhaps, in this case, Accatone was not a party animal journalist who sought ephemeral pleasure in social middle-class gatherings and women, but the spirit is, by itself, maintained astonishingly faithfully: Accatone is no longer a protagonist in Pasolini's movie, doomed to descend lower and lower in social class, losing both his dignity, his social acceptability and his profound "style", but a symbol, a metaphor for Pasolini's own political beliefs. Under this figure of a brute, behind the otherwise repelling image of a short dirty man with a sly smile and a peculiar walk, lies the failure of post war Italian government, a government which, according to this movie's subtext, strove so hopelessly to attain social and economical success for Rome's population, and somehow neglected or marginalized Rome's peripheries, causing people like Accatone and his girlfriends to result in prostitution and theft. A kind of pretension and make-belief well being which was also visible, at the time, in America. Yes, Accatone is the result of this American Dream's pastische.

Yes, it has some not so good scenes, bad lightning and it´s far from Passolini's beautiful aesthetic, but still, this movie is a masterpiece for what it represents. A brilliant start for a genius career, powerful and great story, and Pasolini's essence all over.

Not a perfect film, but certainly a great one, which is definitely worth seeing. Out of all directors, Pasolini can certainly be described as one of the most compassionate and "spiritual" if I can use this term for an atheist. No other director has shown such brotherly love and understanding towards those on the very lowest rung of society as he has: Those society skives like the prostitutes, pimps, and thieves. The film's character is neither a saint nor complete sinner. He may exploit women for his well-being due to the economic system we live in that both encourages and sometimes forces us to be parasitic upon others. However at the same time he also capable of great self-sacrifice and love as shown by his desire to takes care of a homeless woman with 4 small children. The film is a metaphor about our current class-based capitalist world. The system is an infernal machine. We on this earth live in a Hell created by our social system. Pasolini was a dedicated socialist. The film begins with a quote from Dante's Purgatorio, implying that the best we, the lower class, as symbolized by the main character Accatone, can hope for is to die and go to Purgatory to atone for our sins.

First movie by PPP,it displays the influence of Neo-realism with its depictions of rooms where adults and brats cram into,its pimps and its hookers,its gangs roaming on wasteland.The hero is a loser whose fate is sealed as soon as his "protégée" is jailed .His longing for purity is very intense,in spite of his "mean" job ,and the meeting with Stella (=star)which apparently should lead him to redemption actually causes his downfall:hence the intriguing scene of the burial (a premonitory dream?or day dream?),the only supernatural sequence in the whole movie :this scenes show Luis Bunuel's influence in the cemetery where the doors are locked and the undertaker digging a hole in the black earth.

Working behind the scenes ,the hypocrite bourgeoisie exploits the poverty of the people ."Teorema" in 1968 can be seen as Pasolini's revenge.

"Accatone" can be looked upon,with hindsight,as a (good) blueprint for "Mamma Roma" ,the young hero of which almost dies like a crucified Christ.But ,chiefly "Mamma Roma" features La Magnani,whose talent combined with that,burgeoning,of the director,produced a masterpiece.

This is not the Rome you see on Contiki. Pasolini has conjured up the half-life of the streets in this extraordinary movie. Accatone is a pimp and an idler, his friends are no better, and they walk Rome's emptiest streets night and day doing nothing much at all. Pasolini captures their aimless existence with his artless cinematography. Most of the dialogue is shot close up, and the cast deliver their lines with character and simplicity. It is perhaps their authenticity that makes them charming. Even Accatone is charming, despite his selfishness, idleness, resentment and occasional misogyny. They all need to be charming. In the bleak world of this movie, irony is the only defence against madness. There are moments of happiness that break through, and prevent the film from becoming monotonous or unrealistic. The beach scene near the start, and the later conversations between the tough and self-confident prostitutes, are scenes in which irony breaks out into humour, and defiance momentarily turns to content.

"The world will kill me, or I'll kill it!" exclaims Accatone. He struggles for redemption— but I won't spoil the end of the movie.

Coming out not long after Godard's "A Bout de Souffle" (Breathless), there are lots of similarities. Both films are about a not very high level criminal for whom things go wrong. Both are shot in black and white. Both have a protagonist with some charm, up against the world because of their disgusting behaviour.

Godard however chooses to dress his criminal up in the occasional trapping of glamour, albeit he is on the run and hiding in a Parisian room. He has the car, he has the glamourous girlfriend and he has the Parisian backdrop.

Pasolini on the otherhand, shows the underbelly of Rome. The prostitutes he tries to persuade to work for him, so that he does not have to work (only trying for one day in the film). The squalour of living without facilities in a shared room with others. The sheer hunger as he starts to starve when unable to get woman to prostitute themselves for him. There is a great scene involving pasta when he and friends are hungry that is very memorable.

For all these reasons it it the better film. It will never be one to show the kids or to show the ordinary cinema goer, but for a film buff it is a fascinating film, well worth watching.

Pier Paolo Pasolini's first feature film is, on the surface, another example of Italian neo-realism, a form that dominated in postwar Italy for decades because of the relative poverty of the industry necessitating minimalized physical productions, but it also appears to be one of those that was heavily political, taking on a main character who never works, living off the labor of another, and is so morally corrupt that he's a joke on the lower end of the criminal world of Rome. Yeah, he feels like a communist critique of the indolent class. However, Pasolini was a storyteller first and foremost, and his efforts, while thematic and political at their core, keep that need to tell a compelling story above everything.

The titular Accattone (Franco Citti), actually named Vittorio, is a pimp whose girl, Maddalena (Silvana Corsini) supports him with her nightly activities. He's one of several young men in the small suburb of Rome who sits around all day every day talking up their toughness while looking down on everyone who works, like Accattone's brother. The irony is that these pimps are the low end of the criminal order, being looked down on by thieves who actually do work their own way for a living. When some Napolitan guys come for a visit, they end up zeroing in on Maddalena, pick her up on the street corner one night, slap her around a bit, and leave her in a gravel field. When she goes to the police, she points fingers at the young men in a line up, but because she can't prove it's them she gets thrown in jail for a few months for perjury leaving Accattone alone without any means to support him.

The portrait of the Italian male youth that Pasolini draws here is a wholly negative one. They are lazy, manipulative, contribute nothing to their communities, and are full of false braggadocio. Our introduction to Accattone is a bet that he'll drown if he eats a full meal and then goes swimming. It's an excuse to eat a lot and then act tough before winning some bit of jewelry or clothing off of one of his friends. His only come down off of his victory is the news that Maddalena got hit by a car (she still has to go out and work the streets, he insists). Accattone is an all-around miserable human being.

That goes even further when Maddelena is in prison. He has to find some new way to support himself. His wife, Ascenza (Paola Guidi) wants nothing to do with him, but he does find a girl that Ascenza works with, Stella (Franca Pasut), a pretty, younger, buxom blonde girl who seems immediately caught up in Accattone's charms. Without a source of income, Accattone works through all of his assets to support her until he runs out and he pushes her to work the street corner just like Maddalena did.

I like how Pasolini tries to give Accattone a way out of his miserable moral state by having Stella have such a terrible time her first night out (she's left someplace remote after she refuses to work her john), so he ends up going to work alongside his brother doing physical labor transporting iron. It's heavy, hard work that breaks Accattone quickly, making just as much money through his own labor as Maddelena did in one night (obviously an intentional detail).

In terms of intentional details, the film is filled with visual cues that are probably the source of some of the controversy around the film upon its original Italian release (being made by Pasolini was always going to be enough on its own, but these almost feel like intentional provocations). Accattone's major visual introduction, when he stands upon the bridge to jump in and prove that he can swim on a full stomach, the young pimp stands alongside a statue of an angel holding a cross taking up the left side of the screen on Ponte Sant'Angelo. Is this making Accettone, the low-life pimp who psychologically abuses his prostitute girlfriend and ropes an innocent into the oldest profession, some kind of Christ-like figure? This isn't like the New Socialist Man, a pure example of the change in humanity that socialism will bring about like Dalton Trumbo wrote. Pasolini feels too independent minded to follow such orders from Soviet authorities (never mind that the Italian communist party kicked him out). Accattone isn't meant to be seen as a good man. He could be seen as a man whom the current Italian system failed, but he's a lazy, entitled, violent thug who steals a gold chain from his four year old son to pay for his meager lifestyle. Perhaps it's a comment on the fallen nature of man? His inability to live up to the promise of the sacrifices of Christ (not that Pasolini himself believed, being an atheist).

It still points to how decidedly Italian the whole film is. Pasolini himself may have left the Church and belief in God behind, but his characters don't act like it. They're suffused in the cultural minutiae of a group of men who were raised going to church every week, receiving education on the Bible, and having those religious references as a common language among them where today it would be more about popular cultural references. That is to say that Pasolini wrote dialogue that feels very real which helped create characters who felt very real in a setting that was very real since they just filmed in Roman streets.

I understand that Pasolini hated the neo-realist movement and rejected it as a label for his own work. I can see the differences because his use of contrasting images is too precise for the cinema verite approach of someone like Sica or early Rossellini. There's also a dream sequence in this, Pasolini's first film, that a neo-realist would never touch.

Still, it's a story, and I find the portrait of this lowlife pimp who goes by an insult as a moniker to be really interesting and involving. The characters are full of life. The actors (all non-professional) feel real. The editing is crisp. The images are thoughtful. The ending has a sad tragedy to it all. This Pasolini fellow, I think he has some talent.