Dana Renga, Assistant Professor
Department Romance Languages Colorado College

abstract

Pier Paolo Pasolini and the Memory of Martyrdom in New Italian Cinema


In this presentation I look at how a series directors, including Nanni Moretti (Caro Diario, 1994), Bernardo Bertolucci (The Dreamers, 2003) and Marco Tullio Giordana (I cento passi, 2000 and La meglio gioventù, 2003) utilize the cultural status of Pasolini to their own ends. Implicit or explicit references to Pasolini in these films recall an engaged (socially, politically, etc.) Italy. Pasolini’s name, of course, evokes an era of social revolt, as much of his writing and filmmaking directly critiqued the serious face of power. However, Pasolini’s status as martyr is continually problematicized and undermined. Oftentimes, his memory is associated with liminal spaces, in Caro Diario, the periphery of Rome, elsewhere, the interior (The Dreamers or La meglio gioventù) or Oedipal conflicts (I cento passi). Rarely, if ever, is he directly linked to the urban sphere and all of its accompanying political, social and economic struggles. Ultimately, while these directors rely on the weight of cultural memory associated with Pasolini in order to forward a variety of messages, a series of mise-en-abîmes attest to the failure or futility of a succession of social movements in the 1960s and 1970s. Rather than directly engage in the making of history in the urban center, characters in these four films, to varying degrees, focus inward, on the personal or the primitive.

short bio

Dana Renga is an Assistant Professor of Italian at Colorado College. Interests in Italian film and gender studies. Finishing a book: "Cinematic Seductions: Gender, Culture and History in Italian Film." Publications include articles on Italo Calvino, Elsa Morante, Mario Puzo and Andrea Zanzotto and Federico Fellini and has articles forthcoming on Roberto Benigni, French and Italian Holocaust Cinema and Lina Wertmuller. She wrote the introduction and headnotes to "Yet Fire is Present, a Selection of Modern Italian Poetry (forthcoming, MLA Texts and Translations Series).