Tribute to Pier Paolo Pasolini
Film Festival
Il Vangelo secondo Matteo (1964)
(The Gospel according to St Matthew)
direction Pier Paolo Pasolini
in collaboration with Rocca Cinema
More man than god, a revolutionary whose teachings are brought to life by his own death, the Jesus of Pasolini preaches a radical and scandalous truth, which the director sought in a cast of non-professionals, starting with the protagonist, Enrique Irazoqui, a Catalan trade unionist who was seeking Italian support against the Franco regime. Among the stones of Matera, Pasolini draws an anti-dogmatic portrait of the origins of Christianity, in antithesis to the intellectual and material structures of the ecclesiastical institution. And what about the music? J. S. Bach’s Matthäus-Passion, Mozart’s Maurerische Trauermusik, Blind Willie Johnson’s blues, Bacalov’s rearrangement of Russian, Greek and Jewish folk songs… accompany PPP’s Jesus in continuous tension between nostalgia and prophecy.
