The Decameron (1971 film)

"The Decameron (film)" redirects here. For the 2008 film, see Virgin Territory.
Il Decameron

Il Decameron film poster
Directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini
Produced by Alberto Grimaldi
Written by Pier Paolo Pasolini (from Giovanni Boccaccio)
Starring Franco Citti
Ninetto Davoli
Pier Paolo Pasolini
Music by Ennio Morricone
Cinematography Tonino Delli Colli
Edited by Nino Baragli
Tatiana Casini Morigi
Distributed by United Artists
Release dates
 West Germany 29 June 1971 (première at the Berlin Film Festival)
US 12 December 1971
Running time
 106 minutes
Country Italy
Language Italian

The Decameron (Italian: Il Decameron) is a 1971 film by Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini, based on the novel Il Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio. It is the first movie of Pasolini's Trilogy of life, the others being The Canterbury Tales and Arabian Nights.

The tales contain abundant nudity, sex, slapstick and scatological humor. The film was entered into the 21st Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the Silver Bear Extraordinary Jury Prize.[1]

Plot

The film, shot in Neapolitan dialect at the behest of the director, offers a variety of episodes from the stories most characteristic of the work of Giovanni Boccaccio, and are linked through a pupil of the painter Giotto (played by Pasolini himself) who arrives in Naples to paint a mural.

In the first episode, Andreuccio of Perugia is cheated by a Neapolitan and dropped in a trough of excrement. The young man is found in the pulp by two thieves who are attempting a coup at a nearby church to steal the jewels from the tomb of a bishop who died a few days earlier. Andreuccio is persuaded and, with a brilliant ruse, manages to steal for himself the most beautiful ring of the deceased.

In the second episode, a young man, Masetto da Lamporecchio, is encouraged by some nuns in a convent to have sex with them. In fact, the young man already had this idea, pretending to be deaf and dumb. However, the sisters proved to be very insatiable. The mother prioress announces that a miracle has been bestowed by God on the young man but, in reality, this is an excuse to keep the young man at the convent.

In the third episode, the commoner Peronella makes a cuckhold of her dimwitted husband. While having sex with the adulterer, her husband unexpectedly comes home for a holiday. The adulterer hides in a large pot while the husband reveals that he has a buyer for the pot with him. Peronella quickly says that she already has a buyer and that he's inspecting the pot. The husband accepts this and goes to the pot room where the adulterer says that the inside of the pot is dirty. The wife tells the husband to clean it before selling it, and while he's inside his wife and the adulterer have sex. The dimwitted husband doesn't notice anything.

In the fourth episode, set in France, Ser Ciappelletto, a merchant, is sent to make a deal. For most of his life, he devoted his soul to sin, seduction and profit, disregarding all moral and ethical values. In fact, God punishes him with a serious illness that forces him to the bed and eventually death. But Ciappelletto wants to confess and calls a Monaco to tell a myriad of lies. Because of these lies, they consider making him a saint. After his death, Ciappelletto is revered as a martyr.

In the fifth episode, a young women meets with her lover on a terrace to plan a fraud against her parents and makes love with him there. The next morning the parents of the girl find the two lovers naked, but recognise the boy as a good match, as his marriage would earn a significant amount of money through dowry, and allow their daughter to marry him.

In the sixth episode, set in Sicily, a girl, Elizabeth, attractive and possessing great wealth, falls in love with Lorenzo, a young employee of her brothers. However, her brothers discover their love and conspire to murder Lorenzo in order to save their family's honor. They bury Lorenzo's body far from home but Elizabeth is led to the corpse of her beloved through a dream. When Elizabeth finds the body, she cuts off his head and brings it back to her bedroom where she hides Lorenzo's head inside a pot of basil that she tends to every day.

In the seventh episode, the commoner Gemmata is deceived by a doctor into believing she can be turned into horse and then back into a human, so she can be used to sow the fields of her husband's farm. The ruse is that the doctor has manipulated the ritual so it requires him to have sex with the woman.

The eighth episode involves two characters from Naples who agree to tell each other about Paradise or Hell when they die. After a time, one of the two dies. But the other is terrified of ending up in the Underworld because he had too many sexual relations with his wife. One night he has a dream in which his friend tells him that he is in Limbo.

The final episode returns to the pupil of the painter Giotto, who has completed his fresco, on which the episodes of the film alternate harmoniously.

List of tales

Further information: Summary of Decameron tales

Cast

References

  1. ↑ "Berlinale 1971: Prize Winners". berlinale.de. Retrieved 2010-03-14.

External links

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