Pigsty [Porcile] *** (1969, Pierre Clémenti, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Marco Ferreri, Ugo Tognazzi, Alberto Lionello, Franco Citti, Anne Wiazemsky) – Classic Movie Review 3271

Writer-director Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1969 metaphorical drama is bleak and alienating though commendably ambitious and powerful all the same, as you’d expect from him. Pasolini scatters challenging ideas and images all over the screen but he makes a hard to digest meal of a movie constructed in two parallel stories.

[Spoiler alert] Pierre Clémenti stars as a soldier in medieval times, who killed his own father. He wanders around a volcanic landscape (shot around Mount Etna), becomes a fine young cannibal, joins forces with a thuggish cannibal (Franco Citti), ravages the countryside and is torn to bits by wild boars (cinghiali) after killing his father.

Jean-Pierre Léaud also stars as Julian Klotz, the son of an ex-Nazi industrialist (Alberto Lionello) in post-war Germany, who build relationships with pigs and eventually goes to live in the pigsty of the title when he gets fed up with his radical fiancée Ida (Anne Wiazemsky) and the rest of humankind.

Pigsty is hard to like and not easy to watch or understand, but it is oddly impressive – certainly visually – and thankfully unique. This is a once-famous Sixties art movie, with a posh big-star Euro cast, but even though it’s a Pasolini film it is rarely revived or scarcely remembered now.

Also in the cast are Ugo Tognazzi as Herdhitze, Marco Ferreri as Hans Günther, Margarita Lozano as Madame Klotz and Ninetto Davoli as Maracchione.

The remarkable cinematography is in safe hands with Tonino Delli Colli, Armando Nannuzzi and Giuseppe Ruzzolini.

Italian cinema legend Franco Citti died in Rome aged 80 on 14 January 2016 after a long illness. Citti, known for his role as Calò in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather: Part III (1990) and in films by Pier Paolo Pasolini, came to fame at 26 playing the title role in Pasolini’s 1961 Accattone.

He continued to work with Pasolini throughout the 60s and 70s, appearing in films such as Mamma Roma, Edipo Re, Pigsty, Arabian Nights and The Decameron.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3271

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