La rabbia di Pasolini (2008 hypothetical reconstruction by Istituto Luce / Minerva / Cineteca di Bologna)

La rabbia (1963). The finale of the section on Marilyn: footage from a detonation of a nuclear bomb. Photo: my snapshot from YouTube.

La rabbia / The Rage / The Anger [the latter translation is used in the 2008 reconstruction].
La rabbia. IT 1963. PC: Opus Film. P: Gastone Ferranti. Organizzazione generale: Antonio Morelli (A.D.C.).
    Soggetto, montaggio, commento: Pier Paolo Pasolini.
    D: Pier Paolo Pasolini. Ass D: Carlo Di Carlo. SC: Pier Paolo Pasolini, including original poetry: Pier Paolo Pasolini. Voices of the readers: Giorgio Bassani (poetry), Renato Guttuso (prose). Paintings: Ben Shahn, Jean Fautrier, George Grosz, Renato Guttuso. ED: Pier Paolo Pasolini, Nino Baragli, Mario Serandrei. Ass ED: Sergio Montanari. Mv, 1,66.
    M: main theme: ”Adagio per flauto: Archi e organo” (attributed to Albinoni, actually comp. Remo Giazotto, 1958). – Cuban revolutionary songs, Los Barbudos; Algerian revolutionary songs; Russian folk songs; "Lo shimmy" (A. F. Lavagnino); "I sogni muoiono all'alba" "Concerto disperato" (Simoni, Rosso); "Tiger Twist" and "Suoni in coreografia" (A. Sciascia).
    Featuring: Gandhi, Nehru, Sukarno, Nasser, Tunisian leaders, Fidel Castro, Charles de Gaulle, Ava Gardner, Sophia Loren, Queen Elizabeth II, Archbishop of Canterbury, Ike Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Patricia Nixon, Pope John XXIII, Maxim Strauch as Lenin in Rasskazy o Lenine by Yutkevich, Marilyn Monroe, Nikita Khrushchev, Yuri Gagarin.
    Premiere: Genova: Cinema Lux, 13.4.1963. 1449 m / 53 min.
    The first release of the film was in a two part whole in 104 minutes (53 min + 51 min) in which the second part was by Giovannino Guareschi.

La rabbia di Pasolini (2008). IT 2008. PC: Istituto Luce / Minerva / Cineteca di Bologna. P: Giuseppe Bertolucci. Commentator: Vittorio Magrelli. Featuring Tatti Sanguineti. Final Pasolini interview by Jean-André Fieschi in Cinéastes de notre temps: Pier Paolo Pasolini (1966) by André S. Labarthe. Colour correction in 2K by L'Immagine Ritrovata. Premiere: Venice Film Festival 2008. 83 min. Includes the 53 min Pasolini original plus introductions and bonus materials. Black and white with colour inserts of paintings.
    35 mm print at 80 min with English subtitles by Title House Issaverdent (Roma) from Cinecittà Luce. Courtesy of Istituto Italiano di Cultura (Helsinki).
    Screened at Kino Regina, Helsinki (Pier Paolo Pasolini), 9 April 2019.

Revisited La rabbia by Pier Paolo Pasolini, his vision of a poet's anger facing the human condition anno 1963. It starts with the detonation of a nuclear bomb and offers a devastating montage of world events since 1945: the liberation of Europe from Fascism, and the reaction of the world to the atrocities of Stalin in East Germany, Hungary, Rome and Paris. There is a quick montage about the liberation of the world from colonialism in India, Indonesia, Egypt, Tunisia and Cuba. We meet world leaders from the USA, England and Russia, and religious leaders from Rome and London. Not forgetting love goddesses from Italy and the United States, and the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin.

The footage is ordinary newsreel stuff, but Pasolini's montage and commentary elevates it to poetry. La rabbia is a magisterial exercise in the art of the montage film, following models by Shub, Vertov, Vedrès, Resnais, and Marker.

Pasolini's favourite sequence was the one devoted to Marilyn Monroe. Giorgio Bassani recites Pasolini's poem written for this film. We see a montage of familiar MM photographs, but in this context they are elevated to something unique and special. In the Pasolini context Marilyn is the muse of modernity, the tragic Aphrodite – Venus of the atom age. Associations flash to the figures of antiquity in Pasolini's oeuvre including Medea, Iocaste (in Oedipus Rex), Athene and Elektra (in his plan for the Oresteia africana). The Marilyn montage ends with a shot of a nuclear detonation.

The spellbinding poetic quality of the 53 minutes section directed by Pasolini is accentuated by the additional material included in the 2008 edition of 80 minutes called La rabbia di Pasolini because the contrast is so striking. Pasolinian poetry is utterly missing from the rest of the 2008 edition.

The main music theme is "Adagio per flauto: Archi e organo" attributed to Tomaso Albinoni, actually composed by Remo Giazotto in 1958. It had been discovered for the cinema by Orson Welles in The Trial and Serge Bourguignon in Les Dimanches de Ville d'Avray (Sundays and Cybèle) the year before. Intriguingly, both Welles and Pasolini combine the adagio with the mushroom cloud of a bomb.

Connections emerge between movies seen one after the other: we had just screened the Norwegian classic The Fight for the Atom Bomb.

The last name quoted by Pasolini in the bonus materials is Socrates. For me, the message of Socrates is wisdom as love and love as wisdom, as in Symposium. For Pasolini, it is la rabbia, anger at the human condition.

The visual quality of the restoration is excellent.

OUR PROGRAM NOTE BASED ON THE BOOK BY OSWALD STACK:
OUR PROGRAM NOTE BASED ON THE BOOK BY OSWALD STACK:

Pier Paolo Pasolini: "La rabbia on siitä erikoinen elokuva, että se koostuu yksinomaan dokumenttiaineistosta. Yhtäkään ruutua ei kuvattu sitä varten. Pääasiassa aineisto on peräisin uutiskatsauksista, joten kuvat ovat äärimmäisen banaaleja ja suorastaan taantumuksellisia. Valitsin joitakin kohtauksia 1950-luvun lopun uutiskatsauksia ja leikkautin ne uudelleen – lähinnä niissä käsitellään Algerian sotaa ja paavi Johanneksen hallintoa, ja mukana on joitakin muita pieniä episodeja kuten italialaisten sotavankien paluu Venäjältä. Ajatuksenani oli, sanoisinko, esittää marxilainen syytös ajankohtaisesta yhteiskunnallisesta tilanteesta ja kehityksestä. Elokuvan erikoinen piirre on se, että selostus on runonmuotoinen. Kirjoitin siihen varta vasten runotekstiä, ja lukijoina olivat Giorgio Bassani, joka dubbasi Orson Wellesin La ricottaan, ja maalari Renato Guttuso. Paras kohta minun osassani, ja ainoa muistamisen arvoinen, on Marilyn Monroen kuolemalle omistettu jakso."
    "Tehtyäni episodini luulin, että asia oli sillä selvä, mutta sitten tuottaja havahtui oivaltamaan, että hän halusi valmistaa kaupallisen menestysteoksen, ja niinpä hän keksi loistavan idean tilata toinen episodi, joka edustaisi poliittisen kentän vastakkaista laitaa. Valitettavasti vain hänen valitsemansa tekijä, Giovanni Guareschi, oli täysin toivoton. Tuli harmia tuottajan kanssa, ja elokuva oli muutenkin kaupallinen fiasko, koska ihmiset eivät halunneet nähdä sellaista ylettömän poliittista aineistoa."
La rabbia poistettiin levityksestä Guareschin episodin rasistisuuden herätettyä julkista pahennusta.
– Oswald Stackin kirjasta Pasolini on Pasolini (1969) AA