The one director Martin Scorsese said will never be irrelevant: “A profound effect on me”
Martin Scorsese’s dedication to the preservation of global cinema is perhaps equally impressive to his own filmmaking, creating the World Cinema Project and collaborating with The Film Foundation and British Film Institute to both restore old film prints and promote film education around the world.
His commitment to the legacy and importance of cinema is nothing short of inspiring, and his true love for the medium is what distinguishes him from many other filmmakers. And when discussing the directors that have most inspired Scorsese, he spoke highly of Pier Paolo Pasolini, the controversial Italian director and mind behind Accattone, Theorem and Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom.
Pasolini’s work has only become increasingly relevant over time, with censorship, consumerism and violence being explored in many of his films, looking at the intersection between art and politics and using extreme methods to draw the audience’s attention to the causes he most aligned himself with. Because of the taboo subject matter in his work, Pasolini was often associated with scandal and was never safe from the threat of danger from the general public and authorities who disapproved of the subject matter in his films.
However, despite the controversy of his storytelling methods, Pasolini insisted on sharing them, saying that “The mark which has dominated all my work is the longing for life, this sense of exclusion, which doesn’t lessen, but augments this love of life”.
Despite the fact that both filmmakers make very different films, they share common ground in the similarities of their upbringing, with Scorsese comparing the experiences they had growing up and how this is reflected in some of their work, but particularly through Pasolini’s 1961 film Accattone.
Accattone follows a pimp whose life begins to spiral after one of his employees is sent to prison. The film feels completely destitute and devoid of hope, with a bleak setting that captures the unrelenting nature of poverty and the struggle to survive in an uncaring world. When Scorsese spoke about the film, he said, “Pasolini is never irrelevant. Over the years, I’ve read everything about him, but that came after the films, though. I saw Accattone at a press screening at the New York Film Festival, that must have been in 1966, I think. It had a profound effect on me because of its truthfulness in dealing with that class of people. I grew up in an area not as impoverished but very often with the same instincts and the same desperation from a lot of people”.
Scorsese’s admiration for the truthfulness in this film reflects his own ability to accurately portray the struggles of working-class people and those without a safety net. While they use very different methods to shine a light on these stories, there is no doubt that Scorsese has been influenced by the brutal honesty of his films and how he was never one to ‘play it safe’, always preferring to make something that speaks to the few, not the many.
Pasolini was met with a bitter end after being murdered following the release of Salo or 120 Days of Sodom, which remains an unsolved case even to this day. However, Scorsese continues to be a fierce champion of his work, always advocating for the underdog and the stories that continue to ring true today.
