Pasolini’s Warning Echoes: 50 Years On, His Take on Fascism More Relevant Than Ever

On the night of November 2, 1975, Pier Paolo Pasolini was brutally murdered. His corpse, drenched in blood and severely disfigured, was discovered the following morning on a desolate piece of land in Ostia, near Rome. Recognized as Italy’s leading intellectual and an influential artist and provocateur, Pasolini was a homosexual who died at 53, leaving behind a controversial film still in post-production. The headline of the morning newspapers read “Assassinato Pasolini,” displaying images of the 17-year-old accused of murdering him. His preference for young working-class men was well-known, leading to immediate assumptions that his death was the result of a sour sexual encounter.

Certain deaths resonate so profoundly that they become symbolic, forever altering the perception of someone’s life. In such a reductive narrative, Virginia Woolf is perpetually heading towards the Ouse River, where she ended her life. Similarly, Pasolini’s legacy is overshadowed by the belief that he was killed by a young male prostitute, an event seen as the ultimate consequence of his daring lifestyle.

However, what if Pasolini’s murder was orchestrated with malicious intent, designed to frame his death as a self-inflicted consequence of his lifestyle, thereby satisfying conservative critics who viewed his life and work as pervasively corrupt?

Moreover, consider if this assassination, both of his person and reputation, was meant to silence and discredit his increasingly vocal alarms about the societal corruption he observed towards the end of his life? “I know,” he repeatedly stated in a pivotal essay published a year before his demise in Il Corriere della Sera, Italy’s prominent daily. Pasolini was outspoken about the ongoing corruption and manipulation of power during Italy’s tumultuous “Years of Lead,” characterized by widespread political violence from extremist groups. His insights warned of a resurgent right-wing power camouflaged under new guises, fueled by a populace numbed by consumerism. Was Pasolini incorrect in his predictions? The answer seems apparent.

Pasolini was born in Bologna in 1922, the same year Mussolini rose to power, into a military household. His early years were spent in Casarsa, his mother’s hometown in the rural Friuli region, after his father was detained for gambling debts. The rift between his parents deepened with the onset of World War II. His mother, Susanna, was a literary and art-loving schoolteacher, while his father, Carlo Alberto, was a committed fascist and military man, spending most of the war in a British POW camp in Kenya.

Pasolini pursued literature at the University of Bologna, but wartime bombings forced him to retreat to Friuli with his mother and younger brother, Guido. He was captivated by the region’s pristine, archaic dialect, which became the medium for his first poetry collection, Poesie a Casarsa, published in 1942. However, the war’s chaos soon reached Friuli, leading to Guido’s execution by rival partisans, further tightening the bond between Pasolini and his mother.

Friuli was also where Pasolini explored his sexuality, drawn to the local peasant boys. This attraction soon put him at odds with the authorities. In the late 1940s, he faced charges of corrupting minors due to an alleged sexual encounter with three teens. Although eventually cleared, the scandal prompted another relocation, this time to Rome.

In Rome, Pasolini encountered a post-war environment reminiscent of the film Bicycle Thieves: a city in ruins, its slums filled with a burgeoning proletariat from the impoverished rural south. He secured a teaching position and delved into the local street dialect, Romanaccio, which influenced his 1955 novel Ragazzi di vita (The Boys of Life), portraying the lives of the city’s street kids and hustlers.

Pasolini’s appearance from this era, captured in photographs, shows a lean, intense man, often dressed in a smart suit covered by a mackintosh, his dark hair slicked back. A keen observer and artist, he initially collaborated as a scriptwriter at Cinecittà, assisting Fellini on Nights of Cabiria. Soon, he began directing his own films, starting with Accattone in 1961, a neo-realist portrayal of a pimp’s grim existence in the Roman slums.

Pasolini quickly moved beyond the usual artistic boundaries, creating films that were overtly political, like Pigsty and Theorem, driven by his disdain for the bourgeois complacency. He adapted biblical and classical tales, producing raw, powerful versions of The Gospel According to St Matthew, Oedipus Rex, and Medea, as well as works like Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, Boccaccio’s The Decameron, and The Arabian Nights as part of his Trilogy of Life.

Pasolini’s films are unique in cinema, blending bawdiness with poetry, visual splendor with intellectual rigor. He often cast amateurs like his longtime companion Ninetto Davoli, contributing to the films’ raw, lifelike quality, as if a Renaissance painting had sprung to life.

By his fifties, Pasolini was internationally renowned yet remained a polarizing figure, facing numerous legal challenges, including charges of obscenity, religious contempt, and bizarrely, attempted robbery with a supposed golden bullet in a black pistol—a weapon he never owned.

Despite his controversies, Pasolini continued to engage vigorously with political issues, particularly through his essays for Il Corriere. In his most famous piece, published in November 1974 and known as Io so (“I Know”), he disclosed his knowledge of political and corporate corruption, including involvement in deadly bombings, which he believed were orchestrated by figures within the government, secret services, and the church. He spoke of his unfinished novel Petrolio, which he intended to use to expose these corruptions further.

Pasolini’s final film, Salò, remains one of the most harrowing cinematic experiences, a chilling meditation on fascism and power based on De Sade’s 120 Days of Sodom. Its unflinching portrayal of brutality and subjugation makes it a difficult yet profound watch, reflecting Pasolini’s relentless exploration of societal undercurrents.

In my latest novel, The Silver Book, I delve into the creation of Salò, imagining Pasolini at work on this disturbing project. Unlike Fellini, Pasolini did not dominate his crew but was respected and admired, albeit often lonely, his personal life marked by relentless searching for transient connections.

Pasolini’s final days were steeped in despair, a sentiment palpable in Salò. He had publicly renounced his earlier, more erotic works, now viewing sex through lenses of death and pain. When asked about his target audience for Salò, he astonishingly replied “everyone,” still believing in art’s transformative power.

One theory about Pasolini’s death suggests he was tricked into going to Ostia to retrieve stolen film reels of Salò. My novel explores this theory but stops short of depicting his brutal murder, which involved being beaten and run over by his own car, leading to a gruesome death. The youth convicted of the murder had minimal physical evidence linking him to such a violent act, hinting at a more complex conspiracy behind Pasolini’s killing.

Pasolini was prescient, possessing a rare artistic foresight, or perhaps he was simply more attuned to the realities of his time. In his last interview, given hours before his death, he lamented society’s obsession with possession and warned of the pervasive educational system that pushed materialism as a virtue. He described his nocturnal ventures into Rome’s underbelly as journeys into hell from which he tried to retrieve truths.

Pasolini’s concerns were not just philosophical but deeply political, reflecting his ongoing critique of societal structures. He believed everyone was complicit in a system that prioritized personal gain over collective well-being, a theme eerily resonant in Salò.

His final words in that last interview hinted at a resignation to the dangers he outlined, yet he planned to continue the discussion the following day. Tragically, by morning, Pasolini was dead.

I firmly believe that Pasolini’s outspoken nature and his dire warnings led to his murder. He foresaw the entwining of capitalism with fascism, a prediction that has only gained relevance over time. While not without his flaws, Pasolini was a visionary who dared to speak truth to power, relentlessly advocating for a deeper understanding of the human condition.

Pasolini’s death might seem to mark Salò as his final, bleak statement, but even in his last hours, he spoke of future projects, of works yet to be imagined. His life, marked by both controversy and creativity, was a testament to his belief in the transformative power of art and his commitment to confronting societal ills.