TRILOGY OF LIFE / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: PIER PAOLO PASOLINI / STARRING: FRANCO CITTI, HUGH GRIFFITH, NINETTO DAVOLI / RELEASE DATE: 9TH SEPTEMBER
The Decameron, The Canterbury Tales and Arabian Nights – the three films that compose Pier Paolo Pasolini’s infectiously enjoyable Trilogy of Life – are arguably the best movies the Italian director ever made. They’re infinitely more fun than the notorious and still uncomfortable-to-watch Salo and, beyond the anarchic genius that was Britain’s own marvellous Ken Russell, it’s hard to think of any other 1970’s auteur who would dare to take three of literature’s best-loved classics and turn them into something that frequently resembles a handsomely-shot Confessions of a… movie (an association that’s only made stronger when Confessions bad boy Robin Askwith pops up (and out) during The Canterbury Tales, fiercely spouting Chaucer while peeing with spectacular gusto on a barn full of peasants).
Yes, that’s right. The Trilogy of Life might be all gussied up to look like the kind of cinema only beard-stroking pseudo-intellectuals could sit through without complaining their bums hurt, but this is rustic arthouse sex comedy goodness for the masses, and even those who are allergic to subtitles and soft-focus codpieces would be well advised to pull out the pole and give these films a chance.
That’s not to say all the films are equally as successful. The Decameron skips happily through themes of sex and death, horny nuns and swaggering braggadocios falling into toilets but it’s more of a hit-and-miss affair than the films that come after it, while The Canterbury Tales quickly becomes a joyous riot of ribald madness involving lustful merchants, lustful students, lustful friars, and Bosch-like demons farting dodgy Holy men across the rocky landscape of Hell. It’s a romp (literally) and anyone who ever wondered if the fourth Doctor was overcompensating for something with his famously long scarf will have all their questions answered during “The Wife of Bath” episode.
But Pasolini definitely saved the best for last. Arabian Nights is more thoughtful and less comic than the films that precede it, as well as being the most narratively successful. With its wraparound story of a lovesick young man searching for a precocious kidnapped slave girl and episodes that include a demon who turns a king’s son into a monkey and a man who doesn’t understand the value of love until its far too late and something quite squirmy has happened to his privates, this is Pasolini musing upon sex and death in a much more mature way than in the previous entries. It’s also a fantastic example of Pasolini as documentarian, especially during the later scenes that were shot mainly in Nepal using local people as extras.
The BFI have given Trilogy of Life a fine treatment, although the pictures of all three films are showing their age and have the inherent visual softness of many of that era’s movies. Still, beyond a full-on 4K restoration it’s unlikely the trilogy will ever look or sound any better. The discs include both Italian and English versions of the films, too. Disappointingly, they really dropped the ball in the special features department. There are only four extras spread across the three discs, the best of which are deleted scenes from Arabian Nights. Considering how much could be said about this trilogy, it’s a genuinely missed opportunity.
