A film of rare brilliance that fully deserves the high reputation it always had.
One is alternately horrified and fascinated by the depravity of the main characters here since such fascination is the only real way to keep on watching. They do not engage ones emotions empathetically and one finds oneself simply admiring their sheer chutzpah and their manifold amoral means of survival that do not involve actually doing an honest days work. They even laugh among themselves that they rob from the blind and steal from little children. The central character played by Franco CITTI is not called accattone for nothing, he simply leeches from all and sundry with no thought for whom he hurts or exploits.
Here the pure amorality of those who claim the poor cannot afford morality is laid bare. To say that only the bourgeoisie can afford to be moral is nothing more than saying the poor are allowed to be immoral because their poverty excuses them and that – worse – they never have to learn morality. This attitude explains why the poor shown here never rise above their poverty because theirs is essentially a poverty of spirit not of material goods.
This is a work from someone who knows what he is talking about since the poor here are never sentimentalized as being worthy of help or care. They are simply shown as they are – warts and all. The photography is also excellent and the compositions successfully mimic the style of the renaissance painters Italy is steeped in. A film to treasure for the ages.
Copyright © 2009 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.
No comments:
Post a Comment