“Rejected in directing”headlines the newspapers without leaving noise to imaginative interpretations. No, nothing to do: that film there is better that it does not come out just, because whoever thought it does not know how to do it. We revive the tape of the time. Spring of 1961which then becomes summer, because they need at least three months to shoot. Roman Borgate. Rays of sun that falls placid on days that disconnect new opportunities. He is never satisfied.
Former writer, poet and intellectual universally affirmed matrix, Pier Paolo Pasolini He feels he had to decline his debtoring expressive talent also in another form. He doesn’t have much experience, of course, but he doesn’t miss ideas. As He starts writing for the cinema. The film that should mark its bright debut is called “Beggar” And who should produce it is the Federiz, a company belonging to Angelo Rizzoli, who has entrusted the long gaze of Federico Fellini the search for new sparkling proposals.
So Pasolini, strong of the name that has been built, but still a newcomer, puts himself at work in an eruption of enthusiasm. The story is that of Vittorio Cataldi, a Roman sub -riotor renamed just “Accattone”, because he married a philosophy of crystal clear life in his manifestation: pulling to live with the worst gimmicks.
For Pasolini, it is, in all respects, a cinematographic transposition of his literary works, a mixture between epic and tragic narrative. That the film can arise a good success is not a conviction at all span in the air: today it is inserted permanently Among the 100 Italian films to be saved.
Except that now it’s up to that newspaper title. Production offices, in the Trastevere district. Tears that fall to fountain on paper, until the ink is moistened. The scene assists, embarrassed, Bernardo Bertolucci. He helps the director of Fellini and does not know how to behave in such a juncture. Because in front he has Pasolini who, desperate, tells him: “He didn’t like the film in Fellini. He told me that I am a good writer, but that I can give up the cinema”. Pier Paolo is literally in pieces.
Later, Fellini will reveal that he did not want to produce the film because of the controversies that had followed The Dolce Vita. To have preferred not to risk, positioning itself on potentially slippery themes, such as those treated here. Yet the two knew each other since the 1950s and Pasolini had already worked with him for the script de The nights of Cabiria (Oscar winner for best foreign film) and for the same Dolce Vita.
When it seems that the cinematographic career is on the point of liquefy even before starting, but here is an epiphanic encounter. The director Mauro Bolognini He enters by chance in possession of the photographs and the script of the film, and aims to put him in touch with the producer Alfredo Bini.
So “Accattone” remains alive, continues his race and is presented at the Venice Film Festival. From there Pasolini will shoot other eleven other feature films, as well as a quantity of episodes and documentaries. Even the most illustrious of the rejection, sometimes, cannot stem the programs of fate.