Pier Paolo Pasolini

Pier Paolo Pasolini (born in Bologna in 1922, died in Ostia in 1975) was an Italian poet, novelist, essayist and film director, and one of the most controversial public figures of postwar Italy. He wrote in Italian and in Friulan, a minority language of the northeast, and his work spans literature, cinema and the political debates of his day. His murder in November 1975 shocked the country, and the circumstances surrounding it remain a subject of dispute.

He grew up in a restless family, moving between Bologna, the Veneto, Friuli, Emilia and Lombardy as his father's army postings changed. In 1926 the family settled in Casarsa, in Friuli, and there he began writing poems inspired by the landscape. After his brother Guido was killed in 1945 in an ambush by Yugoslav partisans, he settled with his mother in Casarsa and helped found the Friulan Language Academy. His early verse in Friulan earned him respect among critics and intellectuals. After the war he moved toward Marxism, but in 1949 he was expelled from the Italian Communist Party for what the party called moral unworthiness, a judgment tied to his homosexuality. In 1950 he moved to Rome, where he turned his attention to the poor suburbs. His novel Ragazzi di vita (1955) brought him fame and an obscenity trial from which he was acquitted.

His style mixes plain, direct language, a lasting preoccupation with the sacred, and harsh criticism of the bourgeoisie, consumerism and what he saw as the Americanisation of Italian culture. In film, where he worked from the early 1960s, he paired social critique with frank depictions of sexuality. Works such as The Gospel According to St. Matthew and Teorema made him a central figure in European cinema. His legacy is still contested: some see him as a prophetic and uncomfortable thinker, others as a provocateur who sought scandal.