S( UI:I:NnPasolini’s RetrospectivenThe Decameron, Canterbury Tales,nArabian Nights; Written and directednby Pier Paolo Pasolini; UnitednArtists Classics.nby Eric ShapearonPier Paolo Pasolini was an Italianndirector who was murdered a few yearsnago in a sordid homosexual incident.nHe, his life and his work can serve asna sort of flattened emblem of what hasnhappened to art cinema in the clutchesnof European gauchisme. The leftismnof post-World War II movie-makers innItaly, France, England and later Germanynhas become like consumption wasnfor the 19th-century romantics: ultimately,nin lieu of tragicalness, it endowedntheir output with a sort of sinisterngrotesqueness. The open procommunismnof the Italian neorealists, thensophistry of Trotskyite and Maoist deviationsnof the late French NouvellenVague all ended in freakishness and nihilism,nneonaturalistic cruelty and sexualnaberrations, a refurbished antibourgeoisnpassion in a world chemicallyndevoid of epiciers, philistines and bourgeoisnbluenoses.nPasolini was certainly not the mostninteresting member of that group—henlacked Rosselini’s inventiveness, Fellini’snmagnitude of artistry, De Sica’snrefinement of humanness, Truffaut’snironic warmth, Antonioni’s cold elegance,nDavid Lean’s literariness, evennDe Santi’s sincerity of commitment tonleft-wing causes. Pasolini’s career begannwith socrealistic tales about thenmisery of the Italian working classesn(which, by that time, were headed toward/)e;!/^nbourgeois affluence). He experimentednwith neo-Catholic “revolutionary”nrevisionism and ended up portrayingnpornographic neopaganism as anreinterpretation of Western culture. Anlamely ambitious sexuality (mostlynhomosexuality) emerges from his worknas a sort of cultural fetishism, maniacaln46inChronicles of Culturenin its intellectual limitation; it looksnlike politics in the pseudoprofound cinematicntreatises of Godard. His retrospectivenin New York featured his lastnthree movies—Ti^e Decameron, CanterburynTales and Arabian Nights—nand each is an attempt to say somethingnby someone who has nothing but banalitynto say.nHis hand is sure when he recreatesnthe crudities of history; he certainly hasna feel for the visual texture of the Orientalnand European Middle Ages. His visionnrings true in his rendition of Bocaccio;nhere he is on the familiar ground ofnimages and sounds instilled in him bynhis Italianness. Unfortunately, he doesnnot reveal Bocaccio in all his literarynrichness: he tells only the Playboy ornPenthouse version of Decameron. Hisnstuds and lascivious nuns do not lust,nthey perform jaded rites of the counterculturalnorgies of the 1960’s. The nakednbodies that fill the screen in these threenfilms have no life; they are pseudoeroticnslogans in which eroticism, bawdinessnand sensuality are supposed to havensome sort of poeticality, but they impartnonly speciousness and boredom.nCm on. AN .n Fi-iv is wli;il Profi’ssor Doctor ArrtuirnSchk’sinjiii-. Jr.. in mi iirtiili- in ihi- U’.///nS/n’cl jiiiirnul, hiis lo say .ihoiil how ihtli1vralshiicsaci!noi|MialisiTi in Aim-ricanikspili- tlif savaj;i- immoriilit) o( rhfnc.ipilalisis:n’!’lu-rii!i !iji-L1(H iin> IMS I’.irk Avrninn-: ilu I’cii i»] u^ li»i)k :ii iliv.’n[i]^>iiiiri[K’. i[~it.-i!iij] ]I|!IN .ini.i vi-.iriinrm [i.i;i^iii.il htiilili iiisi-ii’fin^-c.nLIBERAL CULTUREnnnThe rancid gravy of aestheticism killsnthe authenticity of human impulsesnwith which Bocaccio and Chaucer, pioneersnof antischolasticism, assurednthemselves places in the history of literature.nThere’s no Botticelli or Veronesenin Pasolini’s female nakedness; eachnof his “maidens,” even those determinedlynstylized to embody adolescent freshnessnand innocence, exudes somethingnoverwhelmingly sluttish.nOne tries to find what exactly is sonrepulsive in this often visually flawlessnfilm-making; it’s not easy, but finallynone discovers that the reality Pasolininconstructs is either plastic beauty a lanHollywood or repelling freakishness a lanWoodstock—with nothing in between.nNormalcy is excised from humanity,nfrom man’s and woman’s looks, instincts,nreactions, mental processes.nFinally, it is a world of pneumatic sexuality,na giant collective fornication bynnaked slapstick figures who jump, leap,npratfall, copulate, huff and puff grotesquely.nOne imagines that the KeystonenCops in the buff in a brothel wouldndo the same job. DnI ItTf we witniss a curious cast- of inythonmania. C^)mix)iindin>; Profi-ssor Schli’singL-r’snn.-inunt’rauon frcMii tcachinj!,nttririnB.li-ttMriii^jandailorninj; thopa^i’snof women s muus as an intclcclc-h dhi-nLearned root) adils up lo a rather prellynincome, proliably quire close lo llial ot ancor]X)rateehietiain. Doesn’t he reeoHnizeninspiieot all hishrilliance. ihai defendinj;nthe poi.)r does not automatically make onenpoor.’ I low many in liberal America havenhetomi- rieh by beinj” so adamantly fornthe pom:”n