The relationship between Pasolini and religion, was always one suspended on a thin line between the spiritual and the profane.

Yet it is precisely in this encounter, between the need to expose the scandal and the need to get at the heart of things, the "spirit", that Pasolini showed his deep religiosity.

This has pathetically misunderstood during the course of his life. In one interview, while he was working on the "Gospel According to St. Matthew", Pier Paolo Pasolini, had said: "In the world in which I live I am rather the sheep in the midst of wolves. And it's been shown by what has happened in these years - I've been literally torn to pieces".

Pasolini has painfully aware of the uneasy and difficult reception that his works were getting from the public, especially where religion - the Christian religion - has concerned. However Pasolini had this consistency, and it has difficult to dissuade him from going on.
 

THE POETRY

Already in his collection of poems, "L'Usignolo della Chiesa Cattolica", Pasolini had shown a readiness to talk about religious subjects - temptation, sin, absolution, priesthood - from the point of view of a heretic, but at the same time also from the point of view of someone who is deeply interested in spiritual matters.

In his 1958 poem "A un Papa", taken from his collection of poems "La Religione del Mio Tempo", Pier Paolo Pasolini attacked the Pope for having done nothing to improve the social and economic conditions of the lower classes living in Rome, who until well into the sixties were still living in appalling conditions in peripheral slums, (the "borgate") where they had been transferred by Mussolini in the thirties in an effort to "clean up" Rome.

Although the poem talks specifically about Marxism, its inspiration is clearly Christian, albeit an archaic one. One gets the impression of a modern Francis of Assisi facing up Pope Innocent III and asking him about Rome's riches and the immense poverty and misery which still surrounded them; in addition, the last few lines revolve around one of the most famous quotations of St.Augustine's description of sin:

"You knew it well, sinning is not about doing evil, failing to do good, that is sin, and how much good you could do! But this you never did, and that's why there can be no greater sinner than you!"

UNDER ATTACK

September 22, 1962. The Roman premiere of "Mamma Roma" at the Quattro Fontane cinema. The last showing ended at one in the morning, and Pasolini was present. A group of university students, members of far right organisations, the fascist Giovane Italia and Avanguardia Nazionale, attacked him in the theatre lobby. Laura Betti and two actors in the films, Sergio Citti and Piero Morgia were at Pasolini's side.

Apart from the continued attacks on Pasolini by the Fascists, he was also put on trial for "contempt of religion of the state" following the release of the film "Rogopag", produced by Alfredo Bini. The film's title, a cipher containing the names of the four authors who contributed to it: ROssellini, GOdard, PAsolini and Ugo Gregoretti, contained an episode directed by Pasolini, "La Ricotta", and it was for this episode that he was put on trial.

Pasolini filmed "La Ricotta" in the autumn of 1962, on a hilly ridge in the countryside near the gates of Rome, between the Via Appia Nuova and the Via Appia Antica, near the Acqua Santa spring.

In his biography of Pasolini, Enzo Siciliano says that "from that landscape of excavated tufa, emerged his most singular film. Moravia, the great Italian writer, in his review called it "brilliant". "I do not mean by this that it is perfect or wholly beautiful; but one can see in it the characteristics of brilliance, i.e. a certain quality of vitality that is astonishing and at the same time profound."

A poem through images about a movie set shooting the Crucifixion. The cinema as self reference - cinema caught in its own trappings, or cinema about cinema. But a cinema that also used drama, painting and literature.

"Get those crucified characters out of there"; "bring up the crosses", "leave them nailed up there", "cuckolds" "silence", the actress Magdalen who dances the cha-cha-cha in front of the crosses; and Stracci, poor Stracci ("Rags" in Italian"), the poor extra playing one of the crucified thieves, who eats so much ricotta during the break that he gets indigestion and literally dies, tied to the cross under the broiling sun.

With all its cries and gestures, its bitter cruelty, Siciliano says that this movie set is nothing but a complex metaphor (a parable) for the temple overrun by moneychangers. Poverty, suggests Pasolini, only poverty with its pure and simple words, can redeem the faith. The theme is complex and profoundly Christian. It does violence to the clericalism of any church.

The blasphemy of the repeated cries - "get those crucified characters out of there!" is the sign of an ancient despair at not seeing the everlasting urgency of religion matched by the world.

It is a picture in which Pasolini's cultural sensibility, and his irreversible need for desecration, for the purpose of making the Christian credo more concrete, achieve their greatest clarity of expression."
 

THE COURT TRIAL

On March 1, 1963, "La Ricotta" was seized for the crime of insulting the religion of the state. The write was signed by the acting public prosecutor, Giuseppe Di Gennaro.

Pasolini gas held by the court to be "guilty of the crime with which he is charged" and sentenced to four months in prison. On May 6, 1964 the Appeals Court in Rome absolved him "because the act does not constitute a crime".

This second judgement was revoked on February 24, 1967, by the Supreme Court "because the offense has been annulled through amnesty". But meanwhile, Pasolini had already expressed himself on religion yet again, and this time in the most unexpected fashion.

In a letter written in February 1963 to Lucio S. Caruso of the Pro Civitate Christiana of Assisi, the writer had told him:

"Dear Caruso,
I should like to explain to you better in writing, what I confusedly confided to you in conversation. The first time I visited all of you in Assisi, I found the Gospels at my bedside: your diabolical calculation!
That day, in your place, I read them from beginning to end, like a novel.
And in the exaltation of reading - as you know, it's the most exalting thing one can read! - there came to me among other things, the idea of making a film... as the days and later the weeks went by, the idea kept getting more overwhelming and exclusive. It threw in the shade all the other ideas for work I had in my head, it weakened and devitalised them.
And it alone remained, alive and thriving within me... my idea is this: to follow the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, point by point, without making a script or adaptation of it. To translate it faithfully into images, following its story exactly without any omissions or additions.
The dialogue too should be strictly that of Saint Matthew, without even a single explanatory or connecting sentence, because no image or inserted word could ever attain the poetic heights of the text... to put it very simply and frankly, I don't believe that Christ is the son of God, because I am not a believer - at least not consciously. But I believe that Christ is divine. I believe that is, that in him humanity is so kind and ideal as to exceed the common terms of humanity. For this reason I say "poetry" - an irrational instrument to express this irrational feeling of mine for Christ.
I would like it if my film could be shown on Easter Sunday in all the parish cinemas in Italy and the world. This is why I need your assistance and support. I should not want my creative needs, my poetic inspiration ever to run up against your sensitivity as believers. Because in that case I should never achieve my purpose of holding up again to everyone a life that is a model - albeit impossible to reach - for everyone."

ASSISTANCE FOR THE FILM

Concrete assistance was in fact given to the film by the Pro Civitate Christiana of Assisi, to which in November 1959, the papal brief of Pope John XXIII had assigned the goal of "leading society back to the principles of the Gospels".

This assistance was an act of courage. Many in the cinema world and in the Church judged the enterprise insane. Controversy flared. The Cittadella in Assisi replied:

"We have had an excellent impression of Pier Paolo Pasolini, as we have of everyone whom we have had the good fortune to approach. Indeed in every human face we see reflected the wonderful face of the Lord... to all those who tell us that Pasolini is not only an unbeliever but also a sinner, we humbly reply that even if true, this does not seem to use any reason to shut the door in his face and deny him the help he has asked us for.
Jesus loved everyone but had a preference for publicans, sinners, thieves and even poor creatures who had fallen into the most anguishing moral misery, such as the Magdalen, the woman taken in adultery, the woman of Samaria. To certain kinds of attacks we have not responded, since the Pro Civitate Christiana is not in the habit of engaging in controversy. We have however, submissively observed that if all of us were truly Christian, on each human sore we would not pour vinegar but the oil of kindness. Jesus died to help everyone, to save everyone..."

FILMING, EDITING AND SCREENING

Filming of the Gospel began in early spring of 1964. The choice of one face was symptomatic - that of Pier Paolo's mother Susanna to play the Madonna, convulsed by grief on the Golgotha beneath the cross bearing her son. He spent the whole summer editing the film.

On September 4, 1964, "The Gospel According to St. Matthew" was presented at the 4th International Film Festival in Venice. It was not a quiet evening.

The fascists staged their usual uproar, hurling leaflets and insults at the spectators. They assaulted among others the painter Renato Guttuso and Paolo Valmarana, film critic for the Christian Democratic newspaper, Il Popolo.

But the showing of the film ended with a long warm applause. Paolo Chilanti wrote of the evening:

"That evening saw the formation of an incredible point of intersection to which flowed various and opposed philosopies and irreconciliable political forces. Only the fascists stood out distinctly: they were alone and spoke and gesticulated alone".

Although later works by Pasolini would also contain clear allusions to religion, such as in "Teorema", and in his post-humously published novel "Petrolio", it was in "The Gospel" that Pasolini was clearest and most accessible to the public about the real motives for which he was making his "shocking" statements on religion.

No, not for the sake of sensationalism, neither for the sake of being original or different, and not even for the sake of becoming famous.

Ironically, the "atheist" and "Marxist" Pasolini has expressing himself on religion in an effort to go back to the roots of Christianity, to the first poor communities of fishermen and farmers in Palestine. In doing this, Pasolini sincerely hoped he would shed away the association that with time had been made between Religion and Power, and thus help in redeeming the true principles of the Christian faith.