Customer Reviews

The Decameron [VHS]

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Boccacio's Decameron consisted of ten realistic stories told by travelers during the plague. Pasolini tied them together and reframed them within the theme of art-does-not-imitate-life. This DVD cut out some scenes essential for understanding the film (e.g., dinner with water melons in the first story, The Invitation), and sanitized certain erotic ones (e.g., Mute Gardener). It is also a pity that the stories have been edited back-to-back without breaks or subtitles so that the viewer not familiar with the original is left guessing where one story ends and another begins. But the greatest injustice to Pasolini is in cutting out most of the final scene that ties all the stories together and gives them a meaning. In that scene real-life thieves, pedophiles, grave-robbers, murderers, adulterers, con artists, and blasphemers - the stories' characters - are shown depicted on cathedral frescos as saints, angels, and archangels by the starry-eyed painter. At the very least, the buyer should be warned that this DVD is an abridged version of the original, and that its editors took poetic licence with it.

Pasolini's first film in his "Trilogy of Life". It tells nine separate tells from the book "The Decameron". All have a very ribald sense of humor and has a surprising amount (for an R rated film) of male and female nudity. Not for anyone who is easily offended but a fairly good film for those who are interested. Also there are a few really huge swipes at the Catholic Church--one story has a convent of nuns using a man to sexually satisfy all of them--and this is shown in a positive light!

This is the first film in Pasolini's "Trilogy of Life" (the others being "The Canterbury Tales" and "Arabian Nights"). It contains eight tales from Boccaccio's mediaeval work, filmed with Pasolini's usual mixture of realism and visual beauty. The natural locations used here also give a lift to these stories combining love, lust, deception, murder, and religion.

As is common in his films, Pasolini has used a combination of non-professional actors and regulars, including Franco Citti in the 'false saint' story, and Ninetto Davoli as a man whose luck goes through several reverses before he comes out on top. Pasolini himself also appears as the mediaeval painter Giotto.

"The Decameron" is quite bawdy, although it never reaches the heights scaled by "The Canterbury Tales" in this department. On the plus side, however, it's in the original Italian (with English subtitles), so it doesn't suffer from the poor dubbing that afflicts "The Tales".

"The Decameron is weakened a bit by the disjointed editing. I'm not sure whether the original film was like that, or if this version used for the DVD was chopped about in some way. Even so, it's an entertaining film with varied stories and a nice period atmosphere.

Of Pasolini's three "Trilogy of Life" films (Decameron, Canterbury Tales, and Arabian Nights), I find the Decameron to be the most disjointed. By removing the original frame-tale (presumably for the sake of length), he opened himself up for some serious flow problems. About halfway through the film, Pasolini himself makes an appearance as a pupil of Giotto who is commissioned to make a painting of Naples on the wall of a church. This becomes a frame-like device (at the tableau scene near the end, you can see many of the characters from the various episodes in the film), but still doesn't make up for the lack of connection (or at least division) between the stories -- one simply stops and the next starts. There are several instances of narrative continuity (look for the grave-robbers at the saint's funeral later in the film), however, including the aforementioned tableau.

That being said, Pasolini's film (and his film-making style) are very influential (most noticeably in the work of Peter Greenaway), with his use of static shots taken from far away in order to give a sense of scale (and awe). Many of the shots in the film are incredibly beautiful (many are simply odd), such as the landscape shots when Andreuccio (played by the incomparable Ninetto Davoli) is running from the city at night.

Overall, while The Decameron is fairly disjointed and shot in a Pasolini's unusual style, it is still a very enjoyable (and hilarious) film. MGM's DVD is a vast improvement over the earlier Image edition, featuring a lush transfer, optional subtitles, and a very strange (and very, very 70's) trailer.

What a great film! So much joy in it. These nine stories are bawdy, funny, sad, and even profound. It's like watching a film from another, pre-cinema era. Like folk tales from several centuries ago captured somehow on film and left behind so we could experience their world through it. The camera wobbles, the editing is abrupt, the acting is direct and innocent. What a treat it all is! A gift to us, with great love, as if a child made it.

Pasolini freely adapts ten or so episodes from Boccaccio's fourteenth century collection of hundred short stories. He interweaves the tales of happy or tragic lovers, naughty nuns and lusty priests, naive husbands and cheating but quick-witted wives, inept grave robbers, and a young gardener who got more than he had bargained for, with his own meditations on art, life, death and love. Pasolini himself plays a painter Giotto who observes the characters that inspire him to paint a fresco on the church's wall. In the end of the film Pasolini's Giotto comments that it may be better to dream about a work of art than to actually produce it.

"Decameron" is the first part of Pasolini's "Trilogy Of Life", which continues with adaptations of two other celebrated works of world fiction; "The Canterbury Tales" (1972) and the "Arabian Nights" aka "A Thousand and One Nights" (1974). All these books have been known as distinguished and revered works of literature that belong to the immortal classics. There are probably so many big volumes have been written about them that it would take more than a thousand and one days and nights to read them. They talk about love, death, the meaning of life, and religion but first and most of all - they entertain. At the time they were told and written down, no one would think of them as the future academic references. That's why they are so alive, earthy, coarse, and bold. I have not seen two other Pasolini's films but 'Decameron' captures the original spirit of Boccaccio's tales truthfully and with love, humanity, and perfect sense of the medieval Italy.

The film has a look of a renaissance painting - not only Italian Renaissance (Giotto) but Netherlandish Northern Renaissance - Peter Bruegel and Hieronymus Bosch.

Full of rustic comedy and innocence, earthy humor and lust for life -"Decameron" is one of the most optimistic, and celebrating life films ever made. Its sexuality is straightforward and honest, moving and not insulting. This film, my first Pasolini made me want to see the rest of the trilogy and the rest of his films.

4.5/5

On a sunny day in Naples, a rich young man comes to the market to buy horses. He is tricked by a woman into believing he is her brother and he ends in the tank of the toilet, robbed and soiled. But escaping that trap he finds himself in the street and the scene turns fantastic. The women from their windows tell him to disappear and the men in the street tell him just the same. So there he runs away dressed in his underwear soaked in and perfumed with human feces. His descent to hell in a way. He hides from some nocturnal men in a barrel in some underground cellar but not for long. The men are thieves and they hire him on a mission and there the real film really starts. You will have to go and see it if you want to get the details. Who will die and who will survive, that is THE question in this cruel world. In this film you have to go down into all kinds of holes, tombs, caves, cellars. Pasolini has rewritten Boccaccio with the pen of Dante and he settles accounts with the church first of all, that Italian church that is rich though doing nothing, by doing nothing and exploiting the whole society. And society is then engaged in a simple game, that of recuperating all they can from that church, be it a benediction, be it an absolution, be it a rite of some sort but also some of the stolen money they carry in their clerical purses. So Pasolini makes his characters steal from the dead bishop, and thus steal from his stealing surviving mates. Then they steal from the people in the street, purse pickers they are. They steal some good cheer, comfort, and pleasure from the hypocritical nuns, at least as long as youth grants the young man with enough potency and power and hardness to be able to satisfy the hunger of twenty nuns. They make false confessions not to save their souls but to look good in society when they die and save some trouble to their friends. And of course they steal as much pleasure as they can and absolutely disregard the idea that it may be a sin. Never mind the sin provided we have the pleasure. And this Italy is the Italy of all crimes, of all murders and embezzlements. And of course they all manage to get through but Hell is the destination of them all and the vision of that Hell is superb and in the tradition of its representations in the churches of the end of the 15th century, after the big plague, the Black Death. And yet poetry haunts this film in the very excess it demonstrates. Excess in the language, intonations that you have to enjoy in Italian of course, but also excess in the body language, especially, but not only, facial language. These Italians speak with their full bodies, particularly their hands and their faces. Excess in desire and passion, violence and hypocrisy. Even the morbidity of some scenes becomes artistic in its extreme sadness. And his vision of Hell is superb. Scatology transformed into a great art and that's just the point. The end of the film is the final vision of the fresco some master painter was painting in a church. That painter is the one who had the vision of hell but he transformed it into a civil and elegant scene full of majesty and nobility. He can regret the vision that was so beautiful but he could not render it on the wall of the church. A beautiful film though maybe slightly nostalgic and restrained, which means not entirely free-wheeling along the easy road Pasolini would have liked to be able to take but did not take entirely or in full light.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines

"The Decameron" is the first film inPier Paolo Pasolini's "Trilogy of Life",and this is pure,magic art! This film,based on Boccaccio's tales of medeivalmagic,violence,and eros,is probablyPasolini's most accessible,purelyenjoyable film!

I discovered the Decameron as a teenager reading the Ribald Tales in Playboy magazine. They followed the centerfold, and decades later I remember them long after my memory of the playmates whose lip gloss matched the soap and towels faded. It led me to the book and to the film which I rediscovered in 2005 (on DVD). The actors are real Neopolitans, the background music comes from Alan Lomax's 1950s field recording of Italian folk music, and the staging and performances are guileless; full of joy, irony, and life. I have watched it many times, and show chapters to my classes at UCLA. The deaf mute in the convent paralels an episode from the tales of the Tibetan trickster, Uncle Thangba. The teen lovers on the cover are the greatest love story ever told, from the moment she asks for her first kiss and he says- lets do it first; until her parents come upon the sleeping lovers, his penis in her hand, and decide it is a good marriage match. This is a movie/DVD to cherish.

Pier Paulo Pasolini's The Decameron (Il Decameron) is a very difficult film to review. A series of nine tales based on the classic by Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) is only a starting point. Pasolini uses the stories to poke fun at the hypocracy of the chuch and to make some rather pointed comments about the nature of art itself. Pasolini seems to feel that true artistic expression exists in the creation of the art not necessarily in the finished product.

The film was quite controversial when it was released but seems far tamer by today's standards. Pasolini freely adapts nine stories from Boccaccio's fourteenth century collection of a hundred short stories. He interweaves the tales of happy or tragic lovers, naughty nuns and lusty priests, naive husbands and cheating but quick-witted wives, inept grave robbers, and a young gardener who got more than he had bargained for, with his own meditations on art, life, death and love. Pasolini himself plays a painter who observes the characters that inspire him to paint a fresco on the church's wall.

Pasolini was a great admirer of the human face and quite a few are on display here. Using primarily unprofessional actors makes the film feel more real. In reality this technique makes the film both more interesting and more difficult to watch. The viewer is continually presented with views of horrible teeth that take away from the experience. That said the cinematography by Tonio Delli Colli and art direction by Dante Ferretti make every frame of the film feel like a Renaissance painting and Pasolini, whether you love his work or hate it was a true master of his craft.

While the film is somewhat slow moving, Pasolini rewards the careful viewer. Pasolini in addition to comments on the church and the arts also pushes his Marxist agenda in the two tales involving young lovers who are exposed by family members. Whe the parties are both of the same social class there is no problem and marriage is proposed. When the lovers are of different social classes one of the participants is killed. Pasolini chose his tales carefully in order to make his points and on this level the film is quite successful.

The edition that I viewed was the standard definition disc by MGM World Cinema and the transfer was quite good. There were no problems with the Italian mono sound. The subtitles were white which makes them a little hard to read at times but this is not a significant problem. Overall this disc is a good introduction to Pasolini's Trilogy of Life it is also the most accessible of Pasolini's films and is well worth a look.