Original subtitles

The most important thing Pasolini taught me

was to see cinema with a painter's eyes.

Minimalist cinema.

I began studying in Rome at the Academy of Fine Arts,

and later I met an architect.

The name of this architect and family friend

was Aldo Tomassini Barbarossa.

He was a great set designer back in Blasetti's time.

He'd actually been in Los Angeles

to work 0n Androcles and the Lion.

He was a friend of my father.

One day he said, “I know you want to be a set designer.”

He was working on a film by Domenico Paolella,

a pirate film to be shot in Ancona.

I thought, “I'm headed back to Le Marche - I just left there!”

But I was really very happy.

So I started working as assistant on this film

for which they reconstructed -

reconstructed a whole piece of the Caribbean

on the fair grounds in Ancona.

So that was my start, and after that I met -

Since the director of production was very happy with me,

and work was to begin on Pasolini's The Gospel According to St. Matthew...

he recommended me to the set designer,

an extremely famous set designer at the time, Luigi Scaccianoce.

So this was my first encounter with Pasolini,

on The Gospel According to St. Matthew.

It was an extraordinary adventure.

But before The gospel

I remember that, back in Ancona, one day we all went to see

Accarrone, which had just been released.

The whole cast and crew of the film

got together that night to see Accattone.

I remember being very impressed with the film

and with Tonino delli Colli's cinematography,

the washed-out black and white.

I remember that the cinematographer was there, and he said,

“It was shot with a Ferrania camera.” Technical details.

I remember

all that very well now,

because it really impressed me.

And especially because it had been a sign,

because soon after that, my second film,

as assistant set designer, of course, was St. Matthew,

shot by Tonino delli Colli.

I remember I was thinking of making Salo' in the style...

in the style of Sironi.

L've always liked empty spaces.

These towns where you see

only buildings and things, the empty streets.

So I got to Mantua.

ll' was a very foggy day, 0f course. You could hardly see a thing.

We set out in a car to see country houses and such.

There was this enormous plain where there was nothing.

I mean, you could see very little.

The plain of the Po Valley.

We saw these country houses and went inside.

He says, “Perhaps we can do something here.”

I looked around. “Here?”

They were old country farmhouses, full of straw and stuff.

“Let's ask. Maybe they'II let us transform it.”

He wanted this old country house

where these four men gathered

and brought the young kids.

We went inside and asked the owner,

the farmer with his family, if they'd move somewhere else,

and we changed the interior completely.

We began stripping away everything:

years and years of tradition and things.

This family had accumulated maybe centuries' worth of -

It was a family of farmers.

We took it all away,

and I brought in the most improbable, impossible things.

Things we'd made in Fascist style, Deco style.

I began designing all these mirrors and chandeliers,

some of them phallic in design.

Carpets that had been recreated,

and furniture from the '30s and '40s,

Italian and even French in style.

We introduced this whole Fascist period into a house

that before had been an Italian farmer's country house.

So this was the contrast.

Color was a very important factor.

We used a lot of that famous red,

what I called “Fascist red,”

partly Pompeian red and partly the red from Mussolini's Foro italico stadium.

It was a color I really liked.

One very important element was the paintings.

There were these large rooms with all these paintings

censored during that period.

We redid the frescoes 0n the walls a la Leger.

ll' was a whole series 0f images, one on lop 0f the other,

that told the story of that period.

You might call it a “graphic” film.

In Italian, a setting

packed with tons of stuff is often called scenografico.

With Pasolini it was just the opposite.

The art direction was always minimalist.

Film was always seen like a painting.

The first time I worked with him, I asked,

“Why do we always approach it like a painting?”

He said, “Because what's a painter really do?”

A painting - and they've always been my inspiration -

does away with all frills.

Painting everything would take forever.

So you include the essentials, the symbolic.

So the graphic element was very important.

Pasolini was a writer,

a poet,

a storyteller.

As a director in the sense 0f the person

whose job it is to tell the story,

he wasn't considered a great master.

He was in regard to what he always said,

what he always espoused.

Yet he was always breaking with tradition.

He's still spoken of today. He was the greatest.

I have to say, having made so many other films,

every time I made a film with him...

he was an entirely different type of director.

A different personality and way of telling a story.

He never moved the camera.

He had a way 0f telling a story from a still point.

At one point he got fascinated with the camera

and wanted to man it himself.

So his first films using a handheld camera

could sometimes make you a little dizzy,

because he used the camera like he'd use

his own head, his own thoughts.

He moved it in a way -

It was a way of following the action from a certain point of view.

ll' was always a specific style, i. a. , a non-style.

A non-style that is its own style.

I always remember Pasolini the same way:

the tremendous appetite for work, the race he was always running.

A hundred shots a day. His wa y 0f telling a story.

On this film I think he was a bit more agitated.

I have to think back now,

because for a while I didn't want to think about it,

because of the shock involved,

whether seeing the film or from the personal story.

I saw the film two days after Pasolini died.

I was seeing it for the first time,

and of course that first time was terribly painful.

I remembered when we made the film.

That atmosphere came back to me, all the violence in the film.

The memory of the violence of Pasolini's death

was a very hard blow.

I haven't watched the film again.

I 've seen stills from it very often,

but I haven't watched the film again.

I wanted to gain some distance

from what was Pasolini's physical end - but not an emotional end.

Maybe one of these days I'II finally watch it again.

I just needed a little time.