The Consecration of the Marginalized: Pasolini's Use of J. S. Bach in Accattone (1961) and Il Vangelo Secondo Matteo (1964)

Abstract

Abstract:In the early 1960s, Pier Paolo Pasolini, already one of the leading intellectuals of postwar Italy, embarked on a remarkable career as a film director that included Accattone (1961) and Il Vangelo Secondo Matteo (The Gospel According to St. Matthew, 1964). Like other Pasolini works, these two films portray gritty underclass worlds, one set in contemporary postwar Italy, the other in biblical times. Since the subject of these two films is a marginalized society, the temptation is to view them as political and cultural commentaries. Like Fellini's La Strada (1954), Pasolini's films outwardly adopt a Neo-Realist ethos. But in fact they quickly reveal an impressionistic ethos, one that places their characters and stories in a timeless world. The characters of both Accattone and Vangelo seem isolated from the world at large, and are thus infused with a sense of epic myth. Violence and poverty are primal elements, far removed from the economic and social "progress" that embodied postwar Italy.This article explores Pasolini's use of the works of J. S. Bach as aesthetic, structural, and transformative devices. In both films, Pasolini relied on Bach's music to sublimate the marginalized worlds and their characters, enabling them to transcend their gritty outward nature. In particular, Pasolini's use of Bach's St. Matthew Passion invites an interpretation that often contradicts the profane visual and narrative elements of the films. But Pasolini's use of music goes beyond aesthetic enhancement. Bach's St. Matthew Passion, as a religious object, transforms his characters (straightforwardly in the case of Christ, but counterintuitively in the case of Vittorio/Accattone) into mythological, spiritual figures who become both sacrificed and sacrosanct.