Dark fragments: contrasting corporealities in Pasolini's La ricotta
Loading...
Files
Published Version
Date
2014
Authors
Murphy, Jill
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Film and Screen Media, University College Cork
Published Version
Abstract
The short film La ricotta (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1963) tells the story of Stracci, an extra working on a film of the life of Christ, which is presented in part via tableaux vivants of Mannerist paintings. Pasolini’s film is replete with formal, stylistic and narrative binaries. In this article, I examine a particularly emphatic binary in the film in the form of the abstract, ethereal corporeality of the Mannerist paintings versus the raw and bawdy corporeality of Stracci. I show that through the reenactment of the paintings and their literal embodiment, Pasolini creates a rapprochement and, ultimately, a reversal between the divine forms created by the Mannerists and Stracci’s unremitting immanence, which, I argue, is allied to the carnivalesque and the cinematic body of Charlie Chaplin’s Little Tramp. I examine how Pasolini gradually deposes the Mannerists, and thus the art-historical excesses and erotic compulsion he feels towards the crucifixion, substituting in their place the corporeal form of Stracci in all its baseness and profanity.
Description
Keywords
Christ , Mannerist , Stracci , Crucifixion , Pier Paolo Pasolini , Binary , Carnivalesque , Charlie Chaplin , Tableau vivant
Citation
Murphy, J.(2014) 'Dark fragments: contrasting corporealities in Pasolini's La ricotta', Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media, 7. https://doi.org/10.33178/alpha.7.03