In November 1975, the Italian film-maker Pier Paolo Pasolini was killed in mysterious circumstances on a beach outside Rome – and nearly 40 years later the conspiracy theories run on. Was the controversial director murdered by a teenaged male prostitute or might his death have been arranged by the Italian authorities? A new film by Abel Ferrara purports to know the answer. It suggests that Pasolini’s death was the result of a ghastly accident during a panicked getaway.
Premiering in competition at the Venice film festival, Pasolini attempts to solve one of cinema’s history’s most notorious whodunnits. Ferrara’s drama shows that the 53-year-old director was injured by several assailants during a homophobic attack. But it claims the fatal blow was actually delivered by Pasolini’s own car, as teenager Giuseppe Pelosi fled the scene of the crime.
“As a Buddhist I tend to meditate on my masters, so I took the liberty of approaching [this subject],” explained Ferrara ahead of the film’s official unveiling. But the 63-year-old director rebutted earlier claims that his film provided the definitive story of Pasolini’s murder. “I never said I knew who killed him, that was a great misquote,” he insisted.
Instead, he argued that the drama was as much about Pasolini’s life as his death. “The point of this film is about his life and his work and his passion,” he said. “Like he said, ‘in one’s death, one’s life’. I was just trying to use that.”
He added: “The pursuit of truth is what really matters.”
Pasolini is Ferrara’s second new film in the space of six months, following his explosive, fact-based Welcome to New York. It stars US actor Willem Dafoe as the acclaimed director of Theorem and Salo, who balances a refined home life with nights spent cruising Rome’s red light district. Early reviews have been positive and the film is tipped as an outside bet to win the festival’s Golden Lion award this weekend.
Following Pasolini’s death, 17-year-old Pelosi confessed to the murder and was subsequently sentenced to nine years’ imprisonment. But in 2005 he recanted his confession, insisting that it had been made under duress after organised criminals threatened the life of his family. Pelosi has yet to comment publicly on the film’s version of events.
At the time of Pasolini’s death, Ferrara was just embarking his own career, shooting low-budget exploitation pictures in 1970s New York. “Decameron was my first exposure to him when I was a very young film-maker,” he told the Guardian. “My love and appreciation of his work has only gotten stronger since then.”
Pasolini was a poet, philosopher, journalist and film-maker. He was an outspoken Marxist whose provocative films public pronouncements enraged the Italian establishment. Ferrara said that the director was unique and that he could think of no obvious equivalents within the film industry today. “But we all have it in us,” he added. “We just need to have his courage, and curiosity, and strength.”
