Pier Paolo Pasolini (Italian: [ˌpjɛr ˈpaːolo pazoˈliːni]; 5 March 1922 – 2 November 1975) was an Italian poet, writer, film director, actor, and playwright. He is considered one of the most important public figures in 20th-century Italian history, known for his influence as both an artist and a political leader. He directed films such as The Gospel According to St. Matthew, the trilogy The Decameron, The Canterbury Tales, and Arabian Nights, and Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom.
Pasolini was a controversial person because of his direct and honest style. He was openly gay and supported efforts to preserve Italian language traditions, cultural traditions, and Christian values in his early years. After World War II, he became a supporter of Marxist ideas. He criticized the Italian petite bourgeoisie and what he saw as the spread of American culture, the decline of Italian culture, and the rise of consumerism driven by greed. As a filmmaker, Pasolini often combined social and political issues with detailed and critical portrayals of topics considered taboo in society. He was a well-known figure in Rome’s intellectual community and became a major name in European literature and cinema.
Pasolini was kidnapped, tortured, and murdered in Ostia in November 1975. His death remains unsolved and has sparked ongoing debate in Italy. Recent investigations suggest that a criminal group called the Banda della Magliana, linked to the Propaganda Due masonic lodge and far-right terrorism, may have been involved in a planned killing.
Biography
Pier Paolo Pasolini was born in Bologna, Italy. He was the son of Susanna Colussi, a Friulian elementary school teacher, and Carlo Alberto Pasolini, a lieutenant in the Royal Italian Army. Carlo Alberto came from a family with aristocratic roots in Ravenna. Susanna and Carlo Alberto married in 1921. Pasolini was born in 1922 and named after his paternal uncle. His family moved to Conegliano in 1923, then to Belluno in 1925, where their second son, Guidalberto, was born. In 1926, Pasolini’s father was arrested because of gambling debts. His mother moved with the children to her family’s home in Casarsa della Delizia, in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region. That same year, Pasolini’s father was detained, and he was later linked to an attempt to assassinate Benito Mussolini. Carlo Alberto eventually supported Italian fascism.
Pasolini began writing poems at age seven, inspired by the natural beauty of Casarsa. One of his early influences was the work of Arthur Rimbaud. In 1931, Pasolini’s father was transferred to Idria in the Julian March (now in Slovenia). In 1933, the family moved to Cremona in Lombardy, and later to Scandiano and Reggio Emilia. Pasolini struggled with these frequent moves but expanded his reading of poetry and literature, including works by Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Coleridge, and Novalis. He also left behind the religious devotion of his early years. In high school in Reggio Emilia, Pasolini met his first true friend, Luciano Serra. They reunited in Bologna, where Pasolini completed high school. There, he developed new interests, including football, and joined a group of friends dedicated to literary discussions.
In 1939, Pasolini graduated and entered the Literature College at the University of Bologna. He explored new topics, such as philology and the aesthetics of visual arts. He also attended a local cinema club. Pasolini often appeared strong and confident to his friends, hiding his inner struggles. In his poems from this time, he began including words from Friulan, a minority language he did not speak but learned after starting to write in it. He described learning Friulan as a “mystic act of love,” similar to how Provençal poets used their language. In 1943, he founded the Academiuta della lenga furlana (Academy of the Friulan Language) with fellow students. As a young adult, Pasolini identified as an atheist.
During the final years of World War II, Pasolini was drafted into the Italian Army. After his regiment was captured by the Germans following Italy’s surrender, he escaped and returned to Casarsa, where he stayed for several years.
In 1942, Pasolini published a collection of poems in Friulan, Poesie a Casarsa, which he wrote at age 18. Intellectuals and critics like Gianfranco Contini, Alfonso Gatto, and Antonio Russi praised his work. His drawings were also well received. He was the chief editor of a magazine called Il Setaccio but was fired after conflicts with the director, who supported the Fascist regime. A trip to Germany helped Pasolini understand the “provincial” status of Italian culture at the time. These experiences led him to change his views on Fascist cultural policies and gradually adopt a communist perspective.
Pasolini’s family moved to Casarsa, a place considered safer during the war, a common choice for Italian military families. There, he joined a group of young Friulan language enthusiasts who wanted to give Casarsa the same status as Udine, the official regional standard. From May 1944, they published a magazine called Stroligùt di cà da l’aga. Meanwhile, Casarsa faced Allied bombings, forced enlistments by the Italian Social Republic, and partisan activity.
Pasolini tried to avoid these events. Starting in October 1943, Pasolini, his mother, and others taught students who could not attend school in Pordenone or Udine. This educational effort was considered illegal and was shut down in February 1944. During this time, Pasolini experienced his first homosexual attraction to one of his students. His brother Guido, aged 19, joined the Party of Action and their Brigate Osoppo, fighting near Slovenia. On February 12, 1945, Guido was killed in an ambush by the Brigate Garibaldi, part of Josip Broz Tito’s Yugoslavian guerrillas. This event deeply affected Pasolini and his mother.
Six days after his brother’s death, Pasolini and others founded the Friulan Language Academy (Academiuta di lenga furlana). In November 1945, Pasolini’s father returned to Italy after his detention, settling in Casarsa. That same month, Pasolini graduated from university after completing a thesis on the work of Giovanni Pascoli, an Italian poet and scholar.
In 1946, Pasolini published a small poetry collection, I Diarii (The Diaries), with the Academiuta. In October, he traveled to Rome. The following May, he began writing the Quaderni Rossi, handwritten in old school exercise books with red covers. He completed a drama in Italian, Il Cappellano. His poetry collection, I Pianti (The Cries), was also published by the Academiuta.
In January 1950, Pasolini moved to Rome with his mother, Susanna, to start a new life. He was cleared of two indecency charges in 1950 and 1952. After living for a year in a flat owned by his maternal uncle near Piazza Mattei, Pasolini and his mother moved to a run-down suburb called Rebibbia, near a prison, where they lived for three years. He drew inspiration from the Friulan countryside and applied it to this Roman neighborhood, one of the infamous borgate where
Career
In 1954, Pasolini, who worked for the literary section of Cinecittà, left his teaching job and moved to the Monteverde quarter. At this time, his cousin Graziella moved in with him. Pasolini also cared for his sick father, Carlo Alberto, who had cirrhosis and died in 1958. Pasolini published La meglio gioventù, his first important collection of Friulan poems. His first novel, Ragazzi di vita (English: Hustlers), which focused on the lower class in Rome, was published in 1955. The book was very popular but not well liked by the Italian Communist Party (PCI) or the Italian government. This led to a lawsuit for "obscenity" against Pasolini and his publisher, Garzanti. Although Pasolini was cleared of wrongdoing, he became a target of rumors, especially in tabloid newspapers.
In 1955, Pasolini, along with Francesco Leonetti, Roberto Roversi, and others, edited and published a poetry magazine called Officina. The magazine closed in 1959 after fourteen issues. That year, he also published his second novel, Una vita violenta, which was welcomed by the Communist cultural group. Later, he wrote a column titled Dialoghi con Passolini (meaning Passolini in Dialogue) for the PCI magazine Vie Nuove from May 1960 to September 1965. These writings were published in book form in 1977 as Le belle bandiere (The Beautiful Flags). In the late 1960s, Pasolini edited an advice column in the weekly news magazine Tempo.
In 1966, Pasolini wrote a screenplay for a film about the apostle Saint Paul, which was never made. He later revised the screenplay. The story showed Paul as a modern person who was once a fascist collaborator but later joined the antifascist movement. The screenplay followed Paul as he spread his message in Italy, Spain, Germany, and New York, where he was betrayed, arrested, and executed. Philosopher Alain Badiou wrote, "The most surprising thing in all this is the way in which Paul's texts are transplanted unaltered, and with an almost unfathomable naturalness, into the situations in which Pasolini deploys them: war, fascism, American capitalism, the petty debates of Italian intelligentsia."
In 1970, Pasolini bought an old castle near Viterbo, several miles north of Rome, where he began writing his last novel, Il Petrolio, which criticized corruption in government and corporate groups like Eni, the CIA, and the Mafia. The novel was left unfinished after his death. In 1972, Pasolini worked with the far-left group Lotta Continua to make a documentary, 12 dicembre, about the Piazza Fontana bombing. The next year, he started writing for Il Corriere della Sera, Italy’s most famous newspaper. In early 1975, Garzanti published a collection of his critical essays, Scritti corsari (Corsair Writings).
Books and films by Pasolini include:
• Ragazzi di vita (The Ragazzi, 1955)
• Una vita violenta (A Violent Life, 1959)
• Il sogno di una cosa (1962)
• Amado Mio—Atti Impuri (1982, originally written in 1948)
• Alì dagli occhi azzurri (1965)
• Teorema (1968)
• Reality (The Poets’ Encyclopedia, 1979)
• Petrolio (1992, incomplete)
Poetry collections include:
• La meglio gioventù (1954)
• La meglio gioventù (1954)
• La meglio gioventù (1954)
• La meglio gioventù (195
Personal life
In September 1949, a small scandal occurred during a local festival in Ramuscello. Someone told Cordovado, the local sergeant of the Carabinieri (Italian police force), that Pasolini had engaged in inappropriate behavior with three children aged sixteen and younger after dancing and drinking. Cordovado contacted the children’s parents, who refused to file charges despite his requests. Cordovado still wrote a report, and the person who reported the incident spoke publicly about the accusations, causing public anger. A judge in San Vito al Tagliamento charged Pasolini with "corruption of minors" and "obscene acts in public places." Pasolini and the 16-year-old were both accused of these crimes.
The following month, when questioned, Pasolini did not deny the events but explained that his actions were driven by a "literary and erotic drive" and referenced André Gide, a Nobel Prize winner for Literature in 1947. Cordovado informed his superiors, and regional newspapers became involved. Pasolini claimed that the Christian Democrats started the situation to damage his reputation. He was fired from his job in Valvasone and removed from the Italian Communist Party (PCI) by the Udine section, which he saw as a betrayal. He wrote a letter to Ferdinando Mautino, a friend and head of the Udine section, saying he felt targeted by the PCI’s "tacticism." Teresa Degan, Pasolini’s colleague in education, opposed his expulsion from the party. Pasolini also wrote to her, expressing regret for being "such a naif, even indecently so." His parents were upset, and family tensions worsened. By late 1949, Pasolini decided to move to Rome with his mother, seeking a fresh start and settling in the outskirts of the city.
In 1963, at age 41, Pasolini met "the great love of his life," 15-year-old Ninetto Davoli, whom he later cast in his 1966 film Uccellacci e uccellini (translated as The Hawks and the Sparrows). Pasolini became Davoli’s mentor and friend. Important women in Pasolini’s life included actress Laura Betti and singer Maria Callas, with whom he shared deep, unique friendships. Dacia Maraini, an Italian writer, noted that Callas followed Pasolini closely, even to Africa, hoping to "convert" him to heterosexuality and marriage. Pasolini expressed concerns about how Italian media portrayed women’s changing roles, stating in a 1972 interview that "women are not slot machines." He also supported his hometown football club, Bologna.
Political views
In October 1945, different political groups began arguing about the future of the Friuli region. On October 30, Pasolini joined a group called Patrie tal Friul, which supported giving more power to local areas in Friuli. He believed Friuli should follow its traditions and work with the Catholic Church in Italy, while also aiming for progress in society. He disagreed with people who wanted local control but did not want to change anything. Pasolini also criticized the Italian Communist Party (PCI) for not supporting local control and instead favoring a strong central government. He started a group called Movimento Popolare Friulano but left when he learned it was being controlled by the Christian Democratic Party to stop local supporters of Yugoslavia from taking over parts of Friuli.
On January 26, 1947, Pasolini wrote a statement published in the newspaper Libertà, saying he believed only Communism could create a new culture. This caused debate, partly because he was not yet a member of the PCI. Pasolini planned to expand the work of the Academiuta to include literature in other Romance languages and met a Catalan poet named Carles Cardó. After joining the PCI, he took part in protests and attended the Peace Congress in Paris in May 1949. Observing workers and peasants and seeing protests in Italy, he began writing his first novel. While teaching at a school, he became known for his writing in the PCI, even though he disagreed with the Party’s support for Stalinism, which was seen as against Christianity. Local Christian Democrats and Catholic leaders noticed his work. In the summer of 1949, a priest warned Pasolini to stop supporting Marxism-Leninism or lose his teaching job. Later, a Christian Democrat official told Pasolini’s cousin to stop Pasolini from spreading communist ideas to avoid problems.
Pasolini caused public debate with his views on politics. For example, in 1968, university students in Rome protested against the police in a way that seemed like a rebellion. Some saw the protests as a fight by poor people against unfair systems, but Pasolini made comments that some people thought he supported the police or favored order, even though he was not a supporter of fascism. The Centro Studi said the idea of Pasolini being an "anti-anti-fascist" was later added by others, not by Pasolini himself. Pasolini used the term to criticize groups like the Christian Democratic Party, the Italian president, a state television network, and a government health commission for ignoring the needs of a man on a hunger strike. He did not include the PCI in his criticism, as he believed the PCI was part of a group that claimed to fight fascism but did not punish fascist groups.
The main source of Pasolini’s views on the student movement is his poem "Il PCI ai giovani" ('The PCI to Young People'), written after a protest in Rome. In the poem, he told students he would not praise them, as the media did, and said they were children of wealthy families. He stated he supported the police during the protest because they were poor people fighting against rich students. The poem suggested that the protests were a conflict within the wealthy class, not a true fight for change. Pasolini asked whether young workers would be treated the same way if they protested, saying the media would not care about their problems, the police would not attack them, and workers could not afford to protest for long. He described the police as poor people fighting against rich students and said the police were part of a larger system of power, like the courts. Pasolini had many legal problems in his life, facing up to 33 lawsuits for things like "obscenity" and "disrespecting religion," but was always found not guilty.
Some people have questioned the traditional view of Pasolini’s position. In 2015, an article by Wu Ming argued that Pasolini’s statements should be understood in the context of his long-standing dislike for the wealthy class, as shown in his poem. The article said Pasolini believed the police were mistreated and that the students were not truly fighting for change, but instead should join the PCI. It also cited a column by Pasolini that supported this idea.
Murder
Pasolini was murdered on 2 November 1975 at a beach in Ostia. He was almost unrecognizable after being severely beaten and hit multiple times with his own car. Many of his bones were broken, and his testicles were crushed by something that looked like a metal bar. An autopsy showed that his body was partially burned with gasoline after he died. The crime was often considered a Mafia-style revenge killing, unlikely to have been done by just one person. Pasolini was buried at the cemetery of Casarsa della Delizia.
Giuseppe "Pino" Pelosi (1958–2017), then 17 years old, was caught driving Pasolini's car and confessed to the murder. He was convicted and sentenced to nine years in prison in 1976, though the verdict later removed the part about "unknown others." Twenty-nine years later, on 7 May 2005, Pelosi retracted his confession, saying he had made it under the threat of violence to his family. He claimed three people with a southern accent had killed Pasolini and insulted him as a "dirty communist."
Other evidence found in 2005 suggested Pasolini was murdered by an extortionist. Testimony from his friend Sergio Citti indicated that some film reels from Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom had been stolen, and Pasolini planned to meet the thieves to negotiate their return on 2 November 1975 after a visit to Stockholm, Sweden. Citti's investigation uncovered a bloody wooden stick and an eyewitness who saw a group of men pull Pasolini from the car. The Rome police reopened the case as a cold case after Pelosi's retraction, but the magistrates found the new evidence not enough to continue the investigation.
Speculation that Pasolini's murder was connected to the Propaganda Due (P2) masonic lodge emerged in the 1990s, after his writings linked P2 member Eugenio Cefis to violent crimes. As of 2023, a request to reopen the case was made based on DNA evidence, linking the murder to the Banda della Magliana, a criminal group closely connected to P2 and far-right terrorism, as the probable culprits.
Legacy
Pasolini, as a director, created films that showed difficult, realistic stories. These films often showed sad truths that many people did not want to see in public art. His film Mamma Roma (1962), which starred Anna Magnani and told the story of a prostitute and her son, was seen as going against the values and beliefs of the time. His work used unique poetry to show harsh realities, helping people see how these realities were connected to everyday life and changing how Italians thought about themselves.
Pasolini’s films and poetry often caused disagreement, especially because he focused on topics like sexual behavior and used Italian dialects. His poetry also included themes about his mother, whom he deeply respected. Many of his poems were about parts of life that few other poets had written about. His poetry was not widely known outside Italy until a collection was published in English in 1996.
Pasolini also studied how language works, especially in relation to cinema. He believed that languages like English, Italian, or dialects are fixed systems that limit how people think. He thought cinema was a way to show reality truthfully, like a written language.
His films received awards from many important events, including the Berlin International Film Festival, Cannes Film Festival, and Venice Film Festival. The Gospel According to St. Matthew was nominated for a United Nations Award by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) in 1968.
Many films and documentaries about Pasolini have been made since his death. These include:
– Das Mitleid ist gestorben, a 1978 documentary by Ebbo Demant.
– In 1986, the music group Coil released an album called Horse Rotorvator, which included a song about Pasolini’s death.
– Who Killed Pasolini? (1995), a film by Marco Tullio Giordana that looked into the trial of the man accused of killing Pasolini.
– Re: Pasolini (2005), a film by Stefano Battaglia dedicated to Pasolini.
– Pasolini (2014), a biopic by Abel Ferrara starring Willem Dafoe, shown at the Venice International Film Festival.
– PPPasolini (2015), a film by Malga Kubiak about Pasolini’s life and death, shown at an LGBT Film Festival in Warsaw.
– La macchinazione (2016), a film by David Grieco, a former collaborator of Pasolini, about his final hours.
Since 2021, Tilda Swinton and Olivier Saillard have organized a performance called Embodying Pasolini, where Swinton uses or interacts with costumes from Pasolini’s films.
The book The Silver Book by Olivia Laing is a novel about the making of Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom and Pasolini’s murder in 1975.