The Decameron (1971) User Reviews (48)

the sly and slightly crazy satire of church and sex

[Quinoa1984 · 8/10 · 20 October 2008]

Pier Paolo Pasolini has with the Decameron what is supposedly one of his "happiest" movies. This is not to say the film is always cheery- matter of fact a couple of the stories deep down are pretty dark and sad and cursed thanks to the repression of religion and mortal sins- but Pasolini's comedy here is sharp and his wit comes out in the obscene or in the random. It's a little like Bunuel only with a more earthy sensibility with the locations and slightly less surreal situations; it doesn't mean that Pasolini is any less ambitious with treating the foibles and stringent ways of the Catholic Church.

The Decameron's only big liability, in my estimation, is that it could be easy to get lost in the structure Pasolini sets up; it's nine stories, ranging from a Sicillian being swindled after finding out he's a brother to a sister of royalty until he's covered in feces, to a supposedly deaf-mute boy who becomes the sex toy for a bunch of sex-starved nuns, to a supposed 'Saint' who fools a priest into thinking he's such with his lackluster confessional, to a girl being met by her boyfriend on the roof and then being (joyfully) caught by her parents since his family is wealthy. They're all interesting stories, more often than not, with even a really short piece like the priest attempting to seduce his friend's wife providing something amusing or eye-catching visually.

But, again, all of these stories go from one into the next without much warning, and one may wonder when the next story really begins or if it's a continuation of the last. As it turns out, like the Phantom of Liberty, it's very stream-of-consciousness and one skewering of morality and sex can bleed easily into the other. And yet some may find this to be a more daring strength than others; certainly it's a very funny movie (if not quite as funny as Pasolini's masterpiece The Hawks and the Sparrows), like with the bit of the guy caught in the tomb, to the frankness of the parents asking the boy to marry their daughter on the rooftop - even just the strange feeling one gets watching the painter (played by, I think, Pasolini himself) in the act of creating an unusual but unique work on a church wall.

The greatest thing of all, for fans of the subversive, is that nothing is out of bounds for Pasolini, via his source material of the Boccaccio book, and he never is one to ever shy away from sex. That's also another asset this time around- unlike Arabian Nights we get some actually erotic bits thrown in the midst, if unintentionally, and on occasion (i.e. the shot following Lorenzo as he runs by the fence) the director conjures something powerful amidst the medieval/surreal/neo-realist pastiche. 8.5/10

The movie is lively, gutsy, and quite funny

[Nazi_Fighter_David · 6/10 · 20 September 2008]

This is the first of Pasolini's three feature-film adaptations of obscene tales of antiquity, the other two being "The Canterbury Tales" and "The Arabian Nights." It contains ten of Boccaccio's most famous tales… The bawdiest story concerns a merchant who back-doors his partner's wife by promising to tell her his secret of turning a woman to a female horse and back to a woman again...

The tale of the two lovers sleeping together on the terrace is quite nice and very erotic, but the most hilarious one involves a young man who pretends he's a deaf mute in order to get into a convent... Once inside, he discovers that the sisters are very curious about all the excitement the world has made over sex and want to find out if it is worth it...

The stories are quite funny and the acting is adequate especially for non-professionals… But the film's charm is in its unrefined energy…It spends as much time showing nude men as it does showing nude women, which was quite unusual for its time

Eros in Middle Ages

[valadas · 7/10 · 10 April 2003]

The erotic and more or less picaresque stories of which this movie is composed is based upon a collection of tales written in the 14th century by Bocaccio an Italian writer already called the Voltaire of 14th century. In the Middle Ages there was a tendency later abandoned, of considering erotic adventures under a humoristic point of view. The most common "hero" of those tales was the cuckold husband. I'm not a great fan of Pasolini. However this movie is more or less successful in depicting a series of funny situations related with erotic entanglements. Its merit is more due to the narrative form than to the stories itselves some them less funny than others. But the composition of the successive scenes develops in a series of pictures full of colour and movement portraying the people in the streets in a realistic way, showing popular types such as peasants, merchants, priests, nuns, etc. most of them with no make-up at all which contributes to create a vivid atmosphere that really puts us in the middle of a mediaeval scenery. Not a masterwork but something worth to be seen anyway.

The Painter

[tedg · 2 October 2005]

Film lovers know "Andrei Rublov," that Russian film about an icon painter. The beauty of the film comes in part because the filmmaker is on the same quest as his character, and that quest has as its core the discovery of beauty. The interesting thing about movies is that they create and sustain a fantasy world that lives beyond any one movie and into which we assume each movie is born. That world has its own type of beauty, one born of color and glamor and poise.

Paosolini does the same thing as Tarkovsky, but where Tarkovsky dealt with cosmic beauty and recognition, this artist has simpler goals: to engage with flesh, to flow with the simple streams of ignoble daily motion, and to discover beauty in that plain world.

Oh, what a terrific cinematic place to visit! This is a far from that collection of movie metaphors and beauty as we can go. There is no movie acting here. There is no external beauty. There is no recourse to familiar characters or representation. As usual, he draws his source material from matter that is not only before cinema, but before any popular writing.

And he works with that material outside any movie tricks. Well, he still has that Italian tendency to believe that the world is populated by characters and not situations or any sort of fateful flow. Just people who do things. Lots of little things, usually associated with pleasure.

So if you are building a world of cinematic imagination you need to have this as one of your corners. That's silly, every one of us is building a cinematic imagination — we cannot avoid it. What I mean to say is that if you are building an imagination, some of which you understand and can use, some of which you actually want and can enjoy without being sucked into reflex...

If you want to just relate to people as people and test how easy it is to find grace in the strangest of faces, then this is your movie voyage for the night.

One rather shocking thing is how the nudity works. In "ordinary" film, we thing nothing of seeing two people humping and moaning, nude pelvises grinding is the most hungry of ways. But we gasp when some genital is shown. Here, the exact reverse is found: no shyness about the obvious existence of genitals, an erection even. A sleeping girl with her hand in her lover's crotch. DIsplayed as if it were in the same cinematic territory as the faces he finds.

But when these characters lay on each other for sex, we have the most prurient of actor's postures. I think this was done simply to avoid an automatic sweep into ordinary film ways. It has that effect anyway.

I don't know anyone that chooses more interesting faces. Distinctly Southern European, odd atypical faces.

And finally, there is the bit of his own story inserted, the artist in the church. Creating scenarios of rich life. In the movie, the most amazing scenes are those that have little or nothing to do with the story. There's a "death" tableau that could be the richest single shot I have ever seen, anywhere.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

Flawed fresco

[CUDIU · 6/10 · 21 December 2011]

Whenever I watch a Pasolini movie, I am invariably caught by sorrowful spasms at several very obvious technical flaws:

1) Why is dubbing used so poorly? Why is the speech so often out of sync? Why, oh why! (Note that until very recent times many Italian flicks suffered from this. I personally believe this is one of the many reasons why Italian cinema, with a few exceptions, has had such a poor diffusion abroad. Movies are made so much more palatable by something as relatively simple as good lip syncing).

2) Acting is mostly very poor. I am not a fan of the actors used by Pasolini. I know very well that he uses non professional actors for a reason, that is to draw more genuine emotions from them, to impress the public with fresh, interesting faces, etc. But I think that, while these effects are only partially achieved, the acting is, simply put, horribly directed. There are other instances of movie makers working with non professional actors, and it is not always bad. But with Pasolini it mostly is. In this movie (as in others) acting looks so unnatural, see e.g. Ninetto Davoli in the first episode. Of course this is magnified by what I said at point 1.

3) Editing is another problem. Cuts are of uncanny lengths leaving too much silence after some character has spoken, or no silence at all. The pacing of sequences, while resulting in a certain naïveté of the narration (something that I think was intended), is mostly erratic and inconsistent.

4) Close-up abuse! When you have cast weak actors/actresses with uninteresting faces that are very poorly dubbed, the worst you can do is punctuating your movie with close-ups! And this is exactly what happens in Il Decameron. (See for example the first episode when the two burglars speak in front of the sarcophagus, with the camera shifting between the two's frontal close-ups, an especially uncanny effect).

I wonder if all of the above are deliberate choices or it is just that Pasolini is not a good filmmaker in those areas. Or maybe it is just me. And the reason I say so is that I have not found (so far) reviews, especially from Italy, that significantly criticize any of those points. However, if you compare Pasolini with the craftsmanship of Italy's greatest director, Federico Fellini, it should be evident that PPP is very far from FF's technical mastery. I am not talking about their artistry or weltanschauung, just of their technical capabilities. Fellini had wonderful actors, who were well dubbed (or self-dubbed) in well edited movies, especially in the early-middle phase of his career. Now, the reason I bring forth Fellini is that Italian critics, while recognizing Fellini as superior, never seem to disprove of the obvious (for me) technical problems that oftentimes make PPP's pictures barely watchable, as if their director's intellectual worthiness, which was testified by his literary accomplishments (Pasolini was a novelist and a poet), were enough by themselves to justify the quality of his cinematic efforts.

The above rant on technical faults is made all the more painful by Pasolini's patent inventiveness, coupled with solid narrative and figurative vigor. I still think that Pasolini is a great filmmaker, notwithstanding all I have said. In Il Decameron, he does capture somehow the popular grace of Boccaccio's short stories. The characters, the landscapes, the architecture, the use of dialect, all contribute to the rendering of a stunning fresco of Medieval Italy, a land where religious superstition, joie de vivre and mockery seemed, and still seem, to be all one.

When you think of how beautiful and gracious the canvas outline comes out, then you can't help cursing the blotches caused by the violent, seemingly uneducated brush strokes of the maestro. And going back to the Italian critics, I really think they got it all wrong in not criticizing Pasolini's style during his career as a director, because all the praise he received from them did not stimulate him to reconsider his technique, so his entire production came out regrettably flawed.

Lust for Life

[Galina_movie_fan · 9/10 · 3 October 2005]

Pasolini freely adapts ten or so episodes from Boccaccio's fourteenth century collection of hundred short stories. He interweaves the tales of happy or tragic lovers, naughty nuns and lusty priests, naive husbands and cheating but quick-witted wives, inept grave robbers, and a young gardener who got more than he had bargained for, with his own meditations on art, life, death and love. Pasolini himself plays a painter Giotto who observes the characters that inspire him to paint a fresco on the church's wall.

"Decameron" is the first part of Pasolini's "Trilogy Of Life", which continues with adaptations of two other celebrated works of world fiction; "The Canterbury Tales" (1972) and the "Arabian Nights" aka "A Thousand and One Nights" (1974). All these books have been known as distinguished and revered works of literature that belong to the immortal classics. There are probably so many big volumes have been written about them that it would take more than a thousand and one days and nights to read them. They talk about love, death, the meaning of life, and religion but first and most of all – they entertain. At the time they were told and written down, no one would think of them as the future academic references. That's why they are so alive, earthy, coarse, and bold. I have not seen two other Pasolini's films but 'Decameron' captures the original spirit of Boccaccio's tales truthfully and with love, humanity, and perfect sense of the medieval Italy.

The film has a look of a renaissance painting – not only Italian Renaissance (Giotto) but Netherlandish Northern Renaissance - Peter Bruegel and Hieronymus Bosch.

As he often did, Pasolin used in the film the non-professional actors to play the medieval peasants. They had none of the Hollywood glamor or classical features or perfect teeth and smiles– but their faces are interesting, original, and real.

Full of rustic comedy and innocence, earthy humor and lust for life –"Decameron" is one of the most optimistic, and celebrating life films ever made. Its sexuality is straightforward and honest, moving and not insulting. This film, my first Pasolini made me want to see the rest of the trilogy and the rest of his films.

Pier Paolo Pasolini's first epic pageant of his ¨trilogy of life¨ series , based on nine bawdy tales

[ma-cortes · 6/10 · 30 November 2018]

This is a peculiar rendition of 9 stories from Bocaccio's "Decameron" set on the 14th Century Italian . An explicit adaptation of classy portmanteu with adequate sets , gorgeous photography , humor and interwoven with strong sexual scenes . As various Boccacio tales were adapted , most notably : A young man from Perugia is swindled twice in Naples , but ends up rich; a roguish youngster goes into a convent with unexpected and erotic consequences ; a woman must hide her lover when her husband comes home early ; a scoundrel fools a priest on his deathbed ; three brothers take revenge on their sister's lover; a teen lies on a roof with a beautiful young girl when their parents appear ; a group of painters wait for inspiration and with Pasolini as Giotto ; and two friends make a pact to find out what happen after death.

An acclaimed , if sexually explicit retelling of a handful of the Boccaccio tales . Here Pasolini has loosely modeled a recounting of Boccaccio's famous tales that were previously adapted and very smoothly in ¨Nights of Decameron¨ (1953) by Hugo Fregonese with Joan Fontaine . Pasolini manages in his uninhibited fashion to capture the bawdy and anarchic spirit of Boccaccio . This is episodic romp in which Pier Paolo is up to his old tricks satirizing the Church , social habits , lower classes and throwing in liberal doses of love and life . However , the sights of the interminable assembly of seemingly toothless villagers Pasolini picked up as extras can be a bit embarrassing . As well as the endless sex scenes and bad taste can be a little intimidating . By the time these escenes were considered obscene , and some images deemed blasphemous. It was initially banned in Italy , and many other countries for several years . The best episodes are the followings : when a young man poses as a deaf-mute in a convent of curious nuns ; when a young girl sleeps on the roof to meet her boyfriend at night and when a crafty priest attempts to seduce his friend's wife . This ¨Decameron¨ is adorned by beautiful cinematography by Tonino Delli Colli , evocative production design and art direction by Dante Ferreti , and enjoyable score by Ennio Morricone ; equally , there are lots of nudism : more male than female , homoeroticism and disagreeable scenes . Pasolini's film career would then alternate distinctly personal and often scandalously erotic adaptations of classic literary texts . As this first intallment of his trilogy of life was followed by Tales of Canterbury (1971) based on Godofredo Chaucer tales and finally the third ¨The Arabian nights¨ featuring 10 of the old Scherezade favorites .

The motion picture was well directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini who was member of the Italian Communist Party from 1947 to 1949 and he was expelled because of his homosexuality. He was also a poet, a painter , actor and a novelist. He frequently casts Franco Citti and Ninetto Davoli and non-professional actors as in The Decameron . In his movies he shows his own more personal projects, expressing his controversial views on Marxism, atheism, fascism and homosexuality . His first film Accattone (1961) was based on his own novel and its violent depiction of the life of a pimp in the slums of Rome caused a sensation . He was arrested in 1962 by his contribution to the portmanteau film Ro.Go.Pa.G. (1963) . It might have been expected that his next film, Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964) , here Paolo presented the Biblical story in a totally realistic, stripped-down style, would cause a similar fuss but, in fact, it was rapturously acclaimed as one of the few honest portrayals of Christ on screen . Subsequently , he made a Greek rendition : Oedipus Rex (1967) . And other films as the Neorrealist Mamma Roma with Anna Magnani , Porcile , The Grim Reaper , Accatone , Il Bell' Antonio , That long night in , and , of course , ¨Trilogy of life¨. Finally , Salo or the 120 day of Sodom that was deemed extremely violent , obscene and Pasolini being judged , condemned and given a suspended sentence by the Italian courts , being a mercilessly grim fusion of the Marquis de Sade's story with Benito Mussolini's Fascist Italy , showing the sinister connection between consumerism and Nazism. Pasolini was murdered in still-mysterious circumstances shortly after completing the film.

Pure Magic

[cyberthetr · 10/10 · 8 August 2003]

Pasolini's films are not for everyone. They are slow moving and play on archetypes, but I can think of no one who captures myth as well he does in his `Trilogy of Life' (The Decameron, The Arabian Nights, and The Canterbury Tales). Pasolini does as delicious job of weaving the mythical and poetic into everyday life. He uses real people instead of actors, and presents sexuality innocently and sensually. Staying away from the sexual violence so common in films of this era, and the soft porn haze we see in Hollywood films today. These universal stories are presented much the way they were written, simply and earnestly. The effect for me has always been pure magic.

Interesting but no masterpiece

[preppy-3 · 7/10 · 30 September 2003]

Director Pasolini films nine tales from the Decameron. Most deal with sex (very explicitly) but almost all show a very ribald sense of humor. Easily the director's most cheerful film--it's best described as "earthy".

I liked it but I didn't love it. Some sequences are better than others and the film does drag in places. Also it has some really mean swipes at the Catholic Church. Most surprising is the film's original X rating here in America was lowered to an R in 1991. I'm not complaining but I'm really surprised (and pleased) that the ratings board did that. It (obviously) got the X for the frequent nudity--both male and female--including one shot with a man at "full attention". But the nudity is treated casually and in a wholesome sort of way--not as something dirty or to be ashamed of. It's not exploitive in any way. Still, this isn't for children.

So, pretty good and worth seeing at least once. A hundred times better than his dreadful "Salo".

Full of rustic comedy, innocence and realism - 14th century Italy brought to life

[AnnaS · 10/10 · 17 March 2000]

The unapologetic choice of ancient, crumbling and dirty locations, coupled with the choice of "real-looking" actors devoid of manufactured graces made this film feel right. 14th century Italy surely was as full of natural humour, even in close proximity to death, as this film makes out. Casual sex in spite of the threat of mortal sin is treated likewise with candour. A real masterpiece showing humanity in all its various forms.

Don't you love it when movies enrage religious institutions?

[lee_eisenberg · 7/10 · 8 January 2007]

I remember that I first heard of Pier Paolo Pasolini in John Waters's "Cecil B. Demented", and I interpreted that he was a very arty, non-mainstream director. I then read about how he always infuriated the Catholic Church, and they often took him to court (I get the feeling that his open homosexuality might have also gotten to them), and was brutally murdered in 1975.

So, I've finally seen one of his movies. "Il Decameron" (or "The Decameron", depending on which language you want to use) tells several stories of life in a medieval-to-Renaissance Italian village. There's lots of sex to go around (especially in places where it's not supposed to happen), and any gross thing that you can think of will probably happen. But believe you me, Pasolini knows how to make it fascinating; after all, who doesn't love some debauchery now and then? So anyway, this is definitely the sort of movie that you would watch for film history classes and things like that. Not at all a movie for the world's straight-laced factions. But I certainly liked it, and not just because Caterina was really hot. This movie is an important part of film history, Italian history, and other things. You just might want to go to Italy after watching it.

Nine Erotic Tales of Boccaccio

[claudio_carvalho · 9/10 · 8 March 2004]

In the Fourteenth Century, in Italy, nine erotic and (most of them) funny tales of Boccaccio are told in Decameron: 1) A young man is deceived in Naples by a beautiful woman, who tells she is her sister. He is stolen, falls in a cesspool full of excrement, but in the end he receives a reward. 2) A young man simulates being deaf and dumb to get a job in a convent and have intercourse with the nuns. 3) A woman cheats her naive husband. In a holiday, the cuckold arrives earlier at home, and the woman uses her creativity to resolve the situation. 4) A very bad man goes to a village to collect some debts, dies and becomes a saint. 5) An exotic painter arrives in a town to paint the wall of a church. 6) A young woman asks her parents to sleep in the balcony of her house to catch a nightingale. 7) Three brothers eliminate the lover of their sister. 8) Two friends, one of them a priest, arrive at the simple and small home of one of them. Due to the lack of space, the priest proposes to transform the wife of the other guy in a mule to help him in the hard job along the day and become a woman at night. 9) Two friends promise to each other to tell how death is, when the first one dies. The best tales are no. 1, 2, 3, 6 and 8. They are really very funny. Once again Pasolini uses some ham actors and many front male nudity, but at least, most of the stories are good and the location is very realistic, not fancy like in Hollywood movies. I liked it, but religious persons certainly will be shocked with this film. My vote is nine.

Title (Brazil): `Decameron'

Inspired many medieval sex comedies

[SMK-4 · 6/10 · 6 November 1998]

Italians have always been quite fond of episodic films and thus Boccaccio's Decameron attracted many film makers over the years. This particular version though is solely responsible for an avalanche of medieval episodic sex comedies made in Italy in the first half of the 1970s. Most of these were either based on Boccaccio's Decameron or Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, most of the others at least followed that style of narration.

Compared to its epigones, Pasolini's film is not quite as exploitative and more willing to confront the viewer with a coarse medieval approach to humour and conflict resolution.

Has its moments but mostly uneven, with some atrocious performances

[grantss · 4/10 · 19 May 2015]

Has its moments but mostly uneven, with atrocious performances.

Nine stories from Giovanni Boccaccio's novel of the same name. Directed and written by Pier Paulo Pasolini.

Some of the stories are interesting, even amusing but none of them really hit the mark in a big way. Most feel anti-climatic, and needing of more substance. Some are just plain pointless and/or over before they've even started.

There are some recurrent themes, especially those of morality and religion, but nothing really gets tied up.

I kept hoping for something that would connect all the different stories, to make them collectively profound, but nothing came.

The closing line of the movie was one rare moment of profundity though, but it didn't really have a context.

Then there's the acting. The performances in this movie are incredibly bad. Think primary school play bad. There's a handful of exceptions but it's a cringefest from start to finish.

Fun bawdy romp from Pasolini

[tomgillespie2002 · 9 January 2012]

The first of what became Pier Poalo Pasolini's Trilogy of Life, with each film adapting stories from archaic literature. In this case, Giovanni Boccaccio's book of the same name, written in 14th century Italy. The film takes nine of the 100 stories from the book and weaves them into vignettes of everyday Medieval life. We see nymphomaniac nuns, grave robbing, deceit, and cuckolding. In one segment, a boy is lured into the house of a pretty girl. She tells him that he is her brother. however, after taking his clothes and money, the boy is thrown out, where he is picked up by a couple of thieves who recruit him to climb inside of a tomb and steal the recently dead archbishop's ruby ring. The boy is left trapped in the grave.

This bawdy romp is a lot of fun. This was a surprise being Pasolini. The portmanteau style storytelling works well with this roaming tour through a debauched, ancient landscape. Many of the oddball characters were non- actors (something Pasolini had used throughout his career), and some have such incredibly rickety teeth, and are a strange and uncomfortable, yet thoroughly enjoyable watch.

The film ends with a statement by Pasolini himself (he played the painter, Giotto between, and within some of the stories), which is possibly a statement about the dream like quality the narrative has in its assemblage of the parts. He says: Why create a work of art, when you can just dream about it? Indeed, why create narrative cinema, when you can manoeuvre through scenes of life and create a patchwork of living, permeated with verisimilitude.

www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

Bizarre

[gavin6942 · 6/10 · 29 August 2016]

An adaptation of nine stories from Bocaccio's "Decameron": A young man from Perugia is swindled twice in Naples, but ends up rich; a man poses as a deaf-mute in a convent of curious nuns; a woman must hide her lover when her husband comes home early; a scoundrel fools a priest on his deathbed; three brothers take revenge on their sister's lover; a young girl sleeps on the roof to meet her boyfriend at night; a group of painters wait for inspiration; a crafty priest attempts to seduce his friend's wife; and two friends make a pact to find out what happens after death.

Not surprisingly for the guy who gave us "Salo", the film contains abundant nudity, sex, slapstick and scatological humor. It is never as offensive as "Salo" is, but if you are easily taken aback by male nudity, you might want to shy away... because this film gives no care at all about your sensibility.

I am not sure what issue Pasolini had with the Catholic Church, but he pokes fun at it here, as he is known to do. You might think this would be a problem in a heavily-Catholic country like Italy, but yet he has gone on to be legend, not least of all because of his courage in courting controversy.

The first movie of "Trilogia della vita"

[solediagosto · 8/10 · 5 September 2006]

This movie is the first of the Pasolini's "Trilogia della Vita" (trilogy of life) movies. The other two movies are "Il fiore delle mille e una notte" e " "I racconti di Canterbury". With this films Pasolini's want to describe essentially the joy of life, in all shapes, in difficult moments too. He based this movies on three middle-age novels in which there's a main novel that contain other novels. "Decamerone" is a XIV century novel by Giovanni Boccaccio and is the most ancient of the three novel. Teen girls and boys, living in a Tuscany isolated house to escape from the Black Death, tell each other symbolical stories. Some of these stories compose the movie. As the novel was in the past, so the movie was considered a immoral thing in the seventies. The movie had many not-official sequels: erotic B-movies with no relation with the symbolic messages of the first one.

Pasolini essentially was a poet and his movies was image poems. Pasolini could only start the "Trilogia della Morte", the trilogy of death, because he was brutally killed during the post-production of "Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma". So Italians lost one of his greatest artists.

Considered to be tame now, but a lot has changed in 50 years.

[mark.waltz · 7/10 · 25 March 2022]

This multi-part historical tale of Northern Italy in the Renaissance is an interesting aligory by one of the greatest directors in Italian cinema (Pier Paolo Pasolini) takes a gentle but often humorous look at the rigid sexual morals of the Catholic church, not ruthlessly expressing its hypocrisy but advocating for a love of life that the church often tried to repress. While the nudity is not excessive, there's enough here to have caused a stir in the early 70's, including plenty of male frontal which must have been shocking at the time. It's certainly not as graphic as "Salo", and thus much more watchable, and Passolini's artistic view of the male body is done with taste even if a few themes in the film are at least eyebrow raising.

The two that stand out for me are the tale of a young man who accidentally falls into sewage and ends up being involved in a grave robbing plot, and the seemingly deaf mute who becomes the handyman for a convent of nuns and ends up being seduced by them. The shot of the poor man in the first segment locked in a grave with the newly buried cardinal is frightening, but fortunately a humorous twist gets him out of his crap. That sequence is made to point out the church's obsession with splendor over aiding the poor, and the shot of him dancing around enjoy at the end is an ironic twist. The tale of the deaf mute being seduced by nuns it's certainly going to have mixed reactions, especially since the nuns are of varying ages and sizes.

The other segments aren't as interesting plotwise, but the artistic way they are all filmed cannot be denied. There's also a very realistic way in how the characters are filmed. Even the most handsome of the men have definite dental issues, something that seems very realistic for this time. Even the wealthy are presented as having some sort of hygiene issue. So at least there, Pasolini did indicate a realism that a lot of movies fail to acknowledge. Discussion of church law usually follows the committing of a sin, and it's Pasolini's way of indicating the ruthlessness of the church that wasn't always acknowledged on screen even when the church elders were presented as pompous rather than righteous. Pasolini seems to be giving the message that no human is free of carnal thoughts or a sinful past, and thus the church has no right to be judgmental when they catch someone in sin, and that repentance is between the sinner and God.

A great masterpiece

[zetes · 10/10 · 20 May 2002]

Pier Paolo Pasolini might be the most underrated director of all time. You hear almost nothing about him nowadays, except how disgusting Salo was. But, in my mind, Pasolini ranks evenly with the other great masters, Fellini, Visconti, De Sica, Antonioni, and Rosselini, perhaps better than them. Pasolini is probably the most humane of all of them (even when considering Salo). The Decameron is a perfect representation of Medieval European humor. Perhaps those unfamiliar with Medieval literature should avoid it, but all Medievalists must see it at some point. The stories are hilarious, and the human stories are beautiful. Just take a look at any face in the film. Pasolini is such a great lover of beautiful faces. Not that all the faces represent the standard concept of beauty, but the ones that might be considered ugly are exceedingly beautiful.

nope

[treywillwest · 9/10 · 7 April 2019]

This is the first of Pasolini's so-called "Trilogy of Life"- adaptations of Renaissance story collections. Pasolini highlights the bawdy, anarchic nature of such literature to suggest a popular culture that was actually less oppressive and repressed than that of modern capitalism.

I watched the Trilogy entirely out of order and while I rather regret doing so, there might have been some advantages to this. I saw Canterbury Tales, the middle film and the slightest, before the last and first entries. In retrospect, Canterbury seemed more interesting to me than it really is because it was the film that introduced me to the style of the trilogy. In fact, as is common, the first and last entries of the series are the strongest.

I think this first film is my favorite of the three. Pasolini appears as an actor in all of these films, but it is here that he is the most important presence. Playing a master painter, he depicts himself trying to create sketches of the many stories we see on screen. His painting only depicts a part of what the film shows us, and the film only attempts to adapt a handful of the stories that comprise the epic poem, The Decameron. This is a statement on the fragmentary nature of adaptation and translation, and therefor of art itself. It also suggests strongly that only that which is fragmentary, which does not yearn for totality, can be liberating.

Pasolini's choice of depicting 9 tales out of a 100

[jordondave-28085 · 6/10 · 4 August 2023]

(1971) The Decameron/ Il Decameron (In Italian with English subtitles) PHILOSOPHICAL HISTORICAL DRAMA

The first of three Pasolini's "Trilogy of Life" movies, with the first book adapted by Giovanni Boccaccio, co-written and directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini adapting nine allegory stories out of a 100 according to Google told by seven young women and three young men. I myself was not too familiar with Giovanni Boccaccio's "The Decameron" as I was aware about "The Canterbury Tales" and "Arabian Nights" from my heydays of school. The first story has a young lady and her entourage convincing Andreuccio (Ninetto Davoli) of Perugia she is his long lost sister, only for him to be swindled of both his clothing and his sack of coins, and with him successfully snitching an expensive ring; the second story has commoner Masetto (Vincenzo Amato) posing as deaf/ mute for free food and bedding to a convent of curious nuns; the third story has a wife, Peronella (Angela Luce) attempting to hide her lover from her husband, who ends up inside a large vase/ urn; the fourth story has a person sending a young guy Ciappelletto (Franco Citti) to collect a debt from two brothers from another village, only for him to end up dying as a result of fasting, who end up confessing his sins to a priest; fifth story has an infamous painter with his underlings brought from the north to be in charge of painting in a cathedral; sixth story has young Caterina (Elisabetta Genovese) tricking her parents to sleep onto the terrace so that she can have a rendezvous with Riccardo (Francesco Gavazzi); seventh story has Elizabetta's three brothers plotting retribution after catching Lorenzo (Giuseppe Arrigio) sleeping with their sister; the eighth story has a man who calls himself a priest making attempts to seduce another man's wife; and the final story has peasants Tingoccio and Muccio making a pact to one another to come and visit whoever be the one to die first.

I must confess if it wasn't for the other reviews and info from wiki and so forth, I would not have recalled many of the stories as some are very vague without a satisfying resolution including some with religious themes, and while I enjoyed some, I did not enjoy others, particularly the one with the three brothers jealousy over the sister's love interest. I mean, it is reminiscent to every other jealous movie ever made, except that with these other films there's a consequence.

The Ruby is all the more beautiful embedded in dirt

[Dr_Coulardeau · 10/10 · 4 June 2008]

On a sunny day in Naples, a rich young man comes to the market to buy horses. He is tricked by a woman into believing he is her brother and he ends in the tank of the toilet, robbed and soiled. But escaping that trap he finds himself in the street and the scene turns fantastic. The women from their windows tell him to disappear and the men in the street tell him just the same. So there he runs away dressed in his underwear soaked in and perfumed with human feces. His descent to hell in a way. He hides from some nocturnal men in a barrel in some underground cellar but not for long. The men are thieves and they hire him on a mission and there the real film really starts. You will have to go and see it if you want to get the details. Who will die and who will survive, that is THE question in this cruel world. In this film you have to go down into all kinds of holes, tombs, caves, cellars. Pasolini has rewritten Boccaccio with the pen of Dante and he settles accounts with the church first of all, that Italian church that is rich though doing nothing, by doing nothing and exploiting the whole society. And society is then engaged in a simple game, that of recuperating all they can from that church, be it a benediction, be it an absolution, be it a rite of some sort but also some of the stolen money they carry in their clerical purses. So Pasolini makes his characters steal from the dead bishop, and thus steal from his stealing surviving mates. Then they steal from the people in the street, purse pickers they are. They steal some good cheer, comfort, and pleasure from the hypocritical nuns, at least as long as youth grants the young man with enough potency and power and hardness to be able to satisfy the hunger of twenty nuns. They make false confessions not to save their souls but to look good in society when they die and save some trouble to their friends. And of course they steal as much pleasure as they can and absolutely disregard the idea that it may be a sin. Never mind the sin provided we have the pleasure. And this Italy is the Italy of all crimes, of all murders and embezzlements. And of course they all manage to get through but Hell is the destination of them all and the vision of that Hell is superb and in the tradition of its representations in the churches of the end of the 15th century, after the big plague, the Black Death. And yet poetry haunts this film in the very excess it demonstrates. Excess in the language, intonations that you have to enjoy in Italian of course, but also excess in the body language, especially, but not only, facial language. These Italians speak with their full bodies, particularly their hands and their faces. Excess in desire and passion, violence and hypocrisy. Even the morbidity of some scenes becomes artistic in its extreme sadness. And his vision of Hell is superb. Scatology transformed into a great art and that's just the point. The end of the film is the final vision of the fresco some master painter was painting in a church. That painter is the one who had the vision of hell but he transformed it into a civil and elegant scene full of majesty and nobility. He can regret the vision that was so beautiful but he could not render it on the wall of the church. A beautiful film though maybe slightly nostalgic and restrained, which means not entirely free-wheeling along the easy road Pasolini would have liked to be able to take but did not take entirely or in full light.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines

Largely overrated and a little disturbing

[rch427 · 4/10 · 7 December 2006]

Yeah, I "get" Pasolini and his milieu, but at the same time, I feel his "Decameron" is largely overrated, and more than a little disturbing. Overrated because the supposed "realism" he introduces (milling crowds, crumbling architecture, etc.) are mooted by the absurd and downright goofy way that the characters behave. In the pursuit of realism, Pasolini utilized many non-actors, but their deer-in-the-headlights stares and painfully awkward line delivery gives the whole a terribly off-kilter and inconsistent feel. And frankly -- many of the toothless, misshapenly-featured people are painful to look at.

And Pasolini's "Decameron" is disturbing (to me at least) because of the casual and prevalent homosexual content. Not because I'm prudish or homophobic (I'm neither) but because the emphasis that Pasolini places upon homoerotic images and situations is contrary to the neo-realism he otherwise espouses, so it comes off as gratuitous and forced. One can almost hear him say "Ooh--I've got to stick a cute, naked boy in this scene!" At times it seems that Pasolini is trying to play up the homosexual angle to thumb his nose at critics, and at other times because he enjoys that aspect himself, regardless of what his audience might prefer.

The disjointedness of the 9 or 10 different stories in Pasolini's "Decameron" struck me as being a failing of Pasolini as a storyteller, rather than being an aspect of neo-realism. He seems to get bored with each story and so he wraps them up rather unconvincingly and with little conviction. Even the Pasolini's final line of dialog in the film, which some people seem to find pithy ("Why create a work of art when dreaming about it is so much sweeter?") -- to me, it just makes me wonder why Pasolini would bother making a film if he felt this way? In my opinion, a far better-crafted film (and with MORE homosexual content) is Fellini's "Satyricon". It is also full of bizarre-looking people and absurd situations, but it succeeds because of its pacing, direction and strong storytelling whereas "Decameron" fails by those same elements.

Amusing Medieval Adventures

[RobertF87 · 13 March 2004]

This film is a portmanteau film based on the famous 14th Century Italian story collection "The Decameron" by Giovanni Boccaccio. The book deals with ten people telling a story each every day for ten days, but Pier Paolo Pasolini (for obvious reasons) chooses merely nine stories for his film. Most of the stories deal with sex or deception (usually both).

Like all portmanteau films, some stories are better than others, but most of the stories in this film are so short that, if you don't enjoy one story, you don't have to wait long for the next one.

The film depicts a world filled with dirt and vulgarity but also full of life. Pasolini used a lot of ordinary people in his films and here we see many of the actors are not conventionally attractive (for example many have bad, or missing, teeth). Pasolini appears in the film as a pupil of the painter Giotto who is assigned to paint a mural on the wall of a church.

I found this film funny, charming and very entertaining. Definitely for adults though, there is quite a lot of sex and nudity on display here.

This was the first film in Pasolini's so-called "Trilogy of Life" and was followed by "The Canterbury Tales" and "The Arabian Nights".

A Joyful Film!

[framptonhollis · 10/10 · 19 November 2016]

Based on a selection of stories from Giovanni Boccaccio's bawdy classic "The Decameron", Pasolini's successful and brilliant film works as a celebration of life, love, and sexuality. It's filled with moments of playfulness, joy, and laugh out loud humor. It also contains a fair share of somewhat tragic and dark elements-but, in the end, the film left with a great smile on my face.

As a person who loves to laugh, I can assure you that "The Decameron" fulfilled my love many times throughout. It's hilarious- containing a sense of humor that ranges from crude to clever and from dark to light. It's one of the funniest films I've seen in a while.

However, the film should also come with a warning, due to it containing some highly explicit sexual content. Practically every story told is sexual in nature, and some of them can be downright offensive depending on your beliefs. Of course, I was not at all offended by the sexual content in this film-even if I was a little shocked every now and then. But with that brief shock quickly came the relief of laughter, so I do not at all mind!

"The Decameron" is wildly entertaining and funny-see it as soon as possible!