Customer Reviews

The Hawks and the Sparrows [VHS]

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Scott Richardson (above) writes that this is one of Waterbearer's better quality DVDs. In which case I certainly won't be buying any of their others!
It is a shame such a low quality product should represent the work of such a great director. Let's hope somebody brings out a remastered version, restored to full length, with chapter stops (how much effort would it take to put them in!) and removable digital subtitles. And it would be nice to hear that Morricone soundtrack clearly.
Come on Waterbearer, try a bit harder.

Although I find Pasolini a brilliant, provocative, and at times sublime filmmaker, I have a hard time connecting with The Hawks and the Sparrows. Of course, some viewers are passionately devoted to it and, like all of Pasolini's films, it is definitely worth seeing. It's an episodic tale of a dotty father (legendary Italian comedian Totò), his rambunctious teenage son (Ninetto Davoli, who appeared in 11 of Pasolini's films and was his lover), and a talking crow (with a passion for alluding to Marx, Brecht, and Mao) who become involved in a series of comic misadventures. Some of the film is very funny, and it works well visually and musically (score by the great Ennio Morricone), but overall it feels at once ponderous yet underdeveloped. Pasolini had set out to make an ideological comedy but, as he remarked in a 1968 interview, "perhaps it came out too 'ideo-' and not 'comic' enough." Exactly!

Some of the most effective elements derive from Pasolini's love of early comedy. The first shot, with Totò and son walking along an endless dusty road, seems to pick up where Chaplin's Modern Times (1936) left off. Totò's stony yet expressive, and hilarious, face brings to mind both Buster Keaton and, surreally, a bird (with a title like this, that means something). Ninetto Davoli is a perfect foil. He is all laughter and devil-may-care hijinks, injecting the film - often set in one form of wasteland or another - with the spirit of youth although, significantly, it is not a spirit of rebellion but more a last burst of steam being let off before following, literally and otherwise, in his father's footsteps. One of the most energetic scenes comes at the beginning, when Ninetto joins a group of teenage boys practicing a line dance to a sassy pop tune. Despite the vitality of this musical number, it shows that he is all too eager to conform his own energy to the group. In Pasolini, as in life, almost everything has multiple, and sometimes paradoxical, meanings.

The film provides ample, if often contrived, opportunities for comedy, but it is often of a violent kind, both emotionally and physically, and reminds us of Theatre of the Absurd. Playwrights like Beckett, Ionesco, and Genet clearly provided Pasolini with a philosophical blueprint for this picture, with their Existential vision of the harsh ridiculousness of life, as well as their subversive style (including illogical, even fantastical plots) that undercuts both dramatic form and the assumptions of their audience. Absurdly, the form of Totò and son's journey - like the structure of the film itself - is a giant loop, as they travel around and around Rome's periphery; always moving but never really getting anywhere. The symbolism is both obvious yet vague.

With Pasolini's encyclopedic knowledge of history and all the arts, the film could also be seen as his unique take on a favorite poet (Pasolini was himself called the greatest postwar Italian poet). Note the central episode at the grotesque, and Felliniesque, Conference of Dentists for Dante. The misadventures of Totò and son could be Pasolini's update of sections from the Divine Comedy's Inferno and especially Purgatorio sections. The omnipresent road in this film lies between two areas, Rome and the countryside, as Purgatory lies between hell and heaven. Like the damned souls in hell, and some of the luckier ones in Purgatory (where so many of the world's great, but not purely-Christian-enough, artists hang out, including Giotto - whom Pasolini played in his film of The Decameron), father and son walk in circles. If they never learn from their mistakes, they'll remain in a Hell of repetitive alienation; but if they do, and can "Purge" themselves of their ignorant and sinful ways (Pasolini's conception of "sin" is more sociopolitical than spiritual), then maybe they can finally catch one of those buses which they're always missing and get out of wherever they are.

The central symbol is, of course, the one in the title, which Pasolini dramatizes in a lengthy film-within-the-film set in the middle ages. But what are we to make of the hawks and the sparrows? The title suggests a kind of symbiotic relationship between predator and prey, even as it symbolizes the two great tendencies within Italian culture and, to a lesser degree, within Pasolini himself: Catholicism and Marxism, and the violence which can result when they clash. But which group do the hawks represent, and which the sparrows? Pasolini keeps the ambiguity coming, as he shows how each group contains elements of both victimizer and victim. Paralleling that, we see father and son in a similarly fraught dual role: They victimize the poor woman when trying to collect her rent, and are in turn victimized by their boss, the landlord. That vicious circle connects not only with all of the circular/repetitive elements in this film, but with most of Pasolini's works, beginning with the beguiling victimizer/victim Accattone in his first film.

But Pasolini needed to flesh out his ideas, to embody them in living, breathing people. Then the comedy might have been funnier, the film might have had a more visceral impact, making its intriguing political and philosophical points more meaningful. Despite my personal reservations (which are certainly not shared by all of Pasolini's admirers), I hope that you will watch this picture and see what you think.

[3-1/2 stars rounded up to 4]

Pasolini's most concise film, perfectly blended humour, religiosity, scandal, and philosophy. enumerates the director's problems with contemporary life in a nutshell; ninetto davoli is adorable!

"The Hawks and the Sparrows" is one of Pasolini's more overtly political films. It revolves (more or less) around the conflict between Marxism and Catholicism.

Not one of Pasolini's better films (although not a bad film by any means), this is, ironically, one of Waterbearer's better DVD's. Although it still suffers from no chapter stops and burned-in subtitles (some of which are missing), the print is fairly crisp and is very watchable. It is unfortunate, however, that this is the original theatrical version of the film, and not the reconstructed version, which contains an additional 11 minutes. Even if these 11 minutes had been available as a special feature, it would have been nice. The audio on the disc is mostly acceptable, although there is a fair amount of noise during the "Dante's Dentist" sequence.

While this disc has some flaws, it is certainly a step up from most of the rest of the Waterbearer Pasolini DVD's...

I picked up this Pasolini film a few days back, and I must say it was something a bit incongruous for Pasolini to make. The film takes place in a barren farmland, where a boy and his father meet a talking crow. Thereupon, the film shifts to a local monastery where we see the boy and father as monks. Inch by inch, they have the ability to talk to birds (i.e. chirping and whistling) as well as communicating with them. However, these birds (sparrows) are suddenly being killed off by the Hawks, and the rest is history. Although appearing dull at first, the movie soon gathers interest after the interaction with the crow, but abruptly finishes on a demented yet humorous note. Not as graphic as his later film would be, even so there's a sick sense of style idiosyncratic to Pasolini; although "The Hawks and the sparrows" still seems a bit weird, as if part of the school of Surrealism. I've heard Pasolini made this film as an allegory for his personal eroticism, or an across-the-board motif for homosexuality. If that were the case, it's a very imperceptible one that is obscured by the film's visual aesthetics altogether. Nevertheless, it's worth a look, and most hardcore Pasolini fans would understand it for its existence and beauty.

The Virgin Knows: an art theft thriller

Pasolini. Pier Paolo Pasolini. Why is he fascinating? Like other Italian intellectuals--or politicians--who you might put behind a podium or in front of a camera he is able to talk up a storm. (BTW: Italian politicians are known to go on for half days rather than hours). Theories. Politics. Right and wrong. Peasant values. Life. Religion. Police...He embodies what we are missing in the 2000s--a respected thinker. Instead we have celebrities who say little about the fabric of life but who are oft quoted on their food intake and love life. Much has changed in 40 years.

Along with being a prolific writer and a public intellectual, Pasolini was a mystic marxist catholic and atheist. The juxtaposition of all these elements, along with a keen intelligence and need to expose alternative sexuality and institutional hypocrisy, saturate his work.

Perhaps being a mystic was most important to him. In interviews he repeatedly spoke up for the need to deliver a mythological element to film. Back to Greek logos and mythos: logos gets too much air time.

Uccelacci and Uccellini embraces the complexity of Pasolini; completely pasoliniesque it is, in fact, a film that he has gone on record saying was his favorite. It is a comedy. It is a satire. It is a modern story that looks back on medieval times to gather momentum. It is an urban/rural clash story. It is a road-of-life story; a circular story. In the interview that accompanied the DVD, Pasolini said "I like to leave stories open...I choose everything." Mostly Uccelacci and Uccellini is a father-son myth: nothing upsets the sacredness of the relationship, not women, not money, not religion.

In many interviews during his career, Pasolini confessed his dislike for his father. He said his relationship with his father ended when he was three years old. Pasolini didn't believe in family, calling it an outdated institution.

Pasolini's father, a lieutenant in the Italian Army, was a descendant of an ancient ancient noble family of Romagna; his mother from a family of Fruilian farmers. Throughout his life, Pasolini remained close and friendly with his mother. The father was also a gambler. Because of his work, the family moved from town to town in Northern Italy. Pasolini never set down roots. He was born in 1922 and was the eldest son.

"Every evening I dreaded dinner time, because I knew that he would have done one of his scenes... Then came my initial separation from my mother which created a childhood neurosis. That neurosis made me restless, a restlessness in which I perpetually questioned my own being (...). When my mother was going to bear, I began to suffer from burning eyes. My father immobilized me on the table of the kitchen, opened my eyes with his fingers and poured in collyrium. After that symbolic event I was no longer able to love my father." ( from Interview with Dacia Maraini in "Vogue", May 1971. )

Uccelacci and Uccellini can be read a reenactment of an ideal father-son relationship. A relationship that is gentle, fun, and accepting.

The film is set somewhere on the outskirts of Rome (another weakness of mine--films and books set in Rome. Check my other BLOG entries). We see poverty, dry fields, run down farmhouses. Outside what today we would call "the corner store" a handful of terminally-teenage boys practice line dancing to loud radio music. In the distance is a tower: phallic symbol alerts us to male theme of the movie. The teenage boys miss the bus into the city: meaning even though they prepared themselves to fit in and to find girls, they are doomed to be stuck out in the boonies, living peasant lives. They are hungry for food, life, women, enlightenment, and answers to the riddle of life. And what Pasolini is saying--if we go forward with the father-son reading--is that the mysteries of life can be passed on from father to son; the son need not go into the city, into modern time.

After their fate as outsiders is established, one of the teenage boys--the young and naive son (Nino Davoli)--and his father (Italian clown Toto)set off on an endless journey on the road of life. They are joined by a talking crow, meet St. Francis and are catapulted back to medieval time to spend a year praying for the conversion of hawks and sparrows. Toto learns the hawk's language and in a hilarious scene dances and speaks to the birds, preaching that God's love is the answer. "The answer to our hunger?" the birds ask.

Birds? Some were born to kill and to eat the others and there is not much to be changed about it. After Toto converts the sparrows, the hawks sweep down and kill a sparrow, taking its innards, leaving the wings and feet.

Father and son magically return to the present time and watch a baby girl being born, go to a funeral (pious documentary footage of the 1964 funeral of Italian communist boss Palmiro Togliatti), collect rent from impoverished farmers, and meet up with a beautiful prostitute who takes the son into the field to make love.

The affectionate father-son journey ends where it began. On the road of life. Nothing pulls them apart, except, perhaps, for a median strip of grass between two roads headed the same direction.

As for the talking crow? As soon as the crow says "I am only human.." the father decides he and his son should eat it. "If we don't eat him someone else will," the father explains. Love comes and goes but everyone has to eat .

Father and son eat the crow like the Romans of old: roasted , in a bowl with figs. What remains in the fire are the crow's feet and wings. Burnt offerings. In life, to get where you want to go, you can choose to walk or fly but the internal life is always the same: devoured by bigger birds. If there is a lesson the father teaches the son, that is the lesson. We can speculate that Pasolini's father might have not taught him that lesson.

"Takers and fakers and talkers won't tell you. Teachers and preachers will just buy and sell you. When no one can tempt you with heaven or hell- You'll be a lucky man!" says the bird.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Uccelacci and Uccellini translates from Italian to The Bad Birds and Little Birds. In English the title changed to The Hawks and the Sparrow.

Uccelacci and Uccellini (1966) 1 hour 28 minutes.

'Actors: Femi Benussi, Ninetto Davoli, Francesco Leonetti, Totò, Renato Montalbano

Directors: Pier Paolo Pasolini

DVD Release date

May 14, 2007

NOT TO BE MISSED: THE MOVIE'S OPENING AND ENDING CREDITS. Ennio Morricone's theme music comically features "singing" movie's credits in mock-operatic fashion.

"Uccellacci e uccellini" aka "The Hawks and the Sparrows" (1964) - directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini

This is a movie that begins like no other introducing the cast and the crew in the manner that is charming, original, melodious and promising of even better things to follow. The fun begins actually with its Italian title, "Uccellacci e uccellini". I don't know about you but the sound of the title simply makes me smile, it sounds like the birds themselves whispered or chirped it to the Pasolini's ear. It is possible to make a satirical philosophical fable concerned with the serious and even grave matters as religion, social and political systems and the order of things and at the same time highly enjoyable, often hilarious, sometimes sorrowful, always original, in one word -Pasolinesque. "Uccellacci e uccellini" talks about desires, death, the meaning of life, Christianity, and Marxism but first and foremost, it entertains. It is about a father (Italian clown Toto) and his young and naive son (Nino Davoli) whom Pasolini sends to the endless cyclical journey on the road of life where they soon will be joined by a talking crow, will be catapulted 750 years back in time and by the request of ST.Francis, they would become two saints (Toto with his clown's face makes a great saint) who would teach the birds (the hawks and the sparrows) the word of God, in the birds' language, of course. The birds seem to agree and accept the words of love but as we know the love comes and goes but everyone (including birds) has to eat and the hunger does not help to improve the understanding between the hawks and the sparrows and between the humans and the crows, even the talking crows. Some were born to kill and to eat the others and there is not much could be changed about it. Two men will be magically returned back to the present time, will go to funeral, will see the baby born, will meet a beautiful desirable girl named Luna who reminds them how divine the fresh hay smells and how much fun it is to make love in it... Their journey would end where it began and on and on and on they go around the world in circles turning. As for the talking crows, "Takers and fakers and talkers won't tell you. Teachers and preachers will just buy and sell you. When no one can tempt you with heaven or hell- You'll be a lucky man!"

I'm not normally a fan of Pasolini, but this not very well known film from 1966, a kind of bridge between his earlier realistic films (Accatone, Mamma Roma) and the later explorations into the realm of popular myth (the medieval Trilogy), is worth a look. It stars the legendary Italian comic Toto, and Ninetto Davoli, who was Pasolini's lover and would be featured in many of his films. The pair engages in a number of comic misadventures, both in the Italy of the mid 60s (where they walk through what seems to be a huge urban wasteland), and in medieval times, where they appear as disciples of Saint Francis of Assisi trying to convert the birds (!). The movie is shot in a free-form style, has a lot of off the cuff humor, and is a sort of an odd combination between the theater of the absurd, the slapstick comedy of the silent movie era and the political films of Jean Luc Godard. There are also many quotes from thinkers revered by the European left of the time, as well as a talking crow. The movie ends up showing the funeral of longtime Italian communist leader Palmiro Togliatti, though given Pasolini long time support of Italian communism is not clearly what this means.

This film is sort of like a bridge between early pasolini (accatone, mamma roma, gospel according to st. matthew) and the pasolini to come (pigsty, teorema, oedipus rex). It is as modern as Godard, yet retains the charm of the italian slums that pasolini so championed in his early films... this is one of pasolini's most blatantly metaphoric films - with a very marxist view of the class system - and yet the comedy of toto combined with pasolini's fascination of the mythic-religous foundation of all stories - makes this one of his more accessible works - i love the talking raven.. Pasolini at his most charming..

One of the many efforts of this iconoclast comic fable is the election of the protagonist couple, the popular italian comic Toto and Ninetto Davoli, that give to the film a kind of comic disaffectation for what's a transition film in the career of Pasolini, a period marked for his disappointment with the italian comunist party and his rupture with neo-realism. This is possible with " Salo " the most emblematic and risked film of Pasolini: a film that connects with the subversive and visceral humour of slapstick and the scepticism and caustic sense of burlesque of Theatre of absurd, and in its turn plenty of self-irony and humanity. We can find connections too with the manierists painters and the Midde ages' antropomorphic fables. Like the bourgeois protagonists of Bunuel's " Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie " the protagonist couple, father and son, seems to walk without a fixed route; an obvious methaphor about the non-sense of life and Pasolini's escepticism about human condition. This Beckettian odissey around the suburbs of Rome is plenty of stops, and in one of them they find a chatterbox raven that presume to be a follower of Karl Marx ( this is a caricature of demagogues of Marxism and a self-caricature too ). The many stops during the journey works as independent vignettes where Pasolini satirizes with bitter gibe many of the facts that has driven him to this scepticism about world and contemporary political ideologies: the explotation of the Third World by the West; the irruption of a pseudo-culture based on merchandising and the rising of a consumer society; the problem of over-population and analphabetism; the vanity and passivity of the intellectuals and the painful conscience that the class struggle has not solution unless the world radically changes, symbolized in the parable inserted in the middle of the film about hawks and sparrows. It has been said that some images of " Hawks and sparrows " reminds Chaplin's " Modern times ", like the shot that closes the film: exactly, but here with an opposite sense to Chaplin's famous movie. This is not the sunrise of a future that the protagonists daydreams 'll be better. Immediately after Toto and Ninetto have dined their feathered travelling partner ( we read, the death of marxist ideology ) they continues their uncertain journey in a twilight hour. In short, as the opening credits illustrates with lyric comicity: the earth as it appears on the moon.

Not a bad DVD edition, but better look for " Connoisseur Video " copy.