Pier Paolo Pasolini - writer and film director

Controversial figure who met violent death

Pier Paolo Pasolini courted controversy in his films,
his private life and his politics

The novelist, writer and film director Pier Paolo Pasolini was born on this day in 1922 in Bologna.

Pasolini's best-known work included his portrayal of Jesus Christ in The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964), his bawdy adaptations of such literary classics as Boccaccio’s Decameron (1971) and Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales (1972), and and his brutal satire on Fascism entitled Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975). 

He also wrote novels and poetry, made documentaries, directed for the theatre and was an outspoken columnist for the Milan newspaper Corriere della Sera, expressing political views that would regularly spark heated debate.

A former member of the Communist Party and openly homosexual, Pasolini died in violent circumstances in Ostia, near Rome, in November 1975, supposedly murdered by a young man he had picked up at the city’s Termini railway station, although there was some mystery around the incident and speculation over motives continues to this day.

The son of an army lieutenant, Pasolini lived in various northern Italian towns in his childhood, determined by his father’s postings. Family life was somewhat turbulent. His father spent time in prison over gambling debts but was also the man who detained Anteo Zamboni, a teenager suspected of attempting to assassinate Mussolini in 1926.

The house where Pasolini was born in Bologna - now an
office of the Guardia di Finanzia, is marked with a plaque

Pasolini graduated from the University of Bologna and began to pursue an interest in writing poetry that he had nurtured since the age of seven, inspired by the beauty of Casarsa della Delizia, a town in Friuli and the home of his mother’s family. He published his first volume of poetry in 1942.

He attributed his mostly Marxist politics to his experience of the oppressed peasant communities around Casarsa. His 19-year-old brother Guido, a member of the anti-Fascist Partito d’Azione, was accidentally killed in by partisans in an ambush.

After 1945, Pasolini worked as a secondary school teacher in nearby Valvasone but his activities as a Communist Party member made him a controversial figure and he was eventually forced out of his job by the local Christian Democrats, whom he accused of manufacturing a scandal that saw him charged with the "corruption of minors and (committing) obscene acts in public places".

In January 1950, Pasolini moved to Rome with his mother Susanna to start a new life. He was later acquitted of both charges. They moved to the run-down suburb of Rebibbia, next to a prison, which provided the inspiration for his first novels, which dealt with the violent lives of poor proletarian immigrants living in often horrendous sanitary and social conditions, and his debut movie, Accattone (1961).

Pasolini taking part in a radio broadcast
in Rome in 1975

Prior to that he had worked variously as a teacher in Ciampino and a writer for Italian state radio before making the acquaintance of the director Federico Fellini, who employed him to help with the Roman dialect in both Le notti di Cabiria and La Dolce Vita.

Pasolini was prepared to tackle controversial subjects. Mamma Roma (1962), featuring Anna Magnani, which told the story of a prostitute and her son, was considered an affront to morality and widely criticised.

The Gospel According to St Matthew (1964), which won awards at both the Venice Film Festival and BAFTA, also attracted criticism, portraying Christ as a revolutionary ‘Red Messiah’, but Pasolini vowed to direct it from the "believer's point of view" and the Catholic Church has since described it as “the best film ever made about Jesus Christ.”

He attracted criticism for different reasons with his sex-laden Decameron (1971), The Canterbury Tales (1972), and Il fiore delle mille e una notte (literally The Flower of 1001 Nights, released in English as Arabian Nights, 1974), his Trilogy of Life, which celebrated the human body while commenting on contemporary sexual and religious mores and hypocrisies. They were hugely popular, Decameron and The Canterbury Tales winning awards at the Berlin Film Festival, although Pasolini later regretted his association with them, because the many softcore imitations of the films made him uncomfortable about their success.

His final work, Salò or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975), exceeded what most viewers could accept at the time in its explicit scenes of intensely sadistic violence. A satire on Fascism - Salò being the name of the Fascist ‘republic’ Mussolini set up in northern Italy in a desperate attempt to cling to power - it is based on the novel 120 Days of Sodom by Marquis de Sade, and is considered Pasolini's most controversial film.

Willem Dafoe starred as Pasolini in the 2014
film about his life directed by Abel Ferrara

Despite evidence that more than one person was involved, only Giuseppe (Pino) Pelosi, the young man he supposedly picked up, was convicted of his murder. Pelosi was caught after police stopped him as he sped from the scene in Pasolini’s Alfa Romeo.

The autopsy indicated that the director had been run over by the car on the beach as Ostia, having first been severely beaten with blunt instruments. Pelosi confessed his guilt, claiming he attacked the director after refusing to be subjected to a particularly violent sexual act.

The verdict of the 1976 court hearing was that Pelosi “and unknown others” were guilty of the crime, although the “unknown others” did not appear in the wording when that verdict went to appeal.

Speculation about alternative motives began almost immediately and intensified when, 29 years later, Pelosi retracted his confession. He said he had made it under the threat of violence to his family and claimed that the crime had been committed by three people regularly seen at the Tiburtina branch of the neo-fascist party Movimento Sociale Italiano (Italian Social Movement).

The conspiracy theorists discussed extortion following the theft of a number of reels of film from Salò as one explanation, while others suspected a political motive.

Franca Rame, who married the playwright
Dario Fo and became a political activist

In his columns in the Corriere della Sera, long before the Tangentopoli enquiry led to the collapse of Italy’s then deeply-corrupt political establishment, Pasolini said that the leadership of the ruling Christian Democratic party should stand trial, not only for corruption and links with the Mafia, but for association with neo-fascist terrorism, such as the bombing of trains and a demonstration in Milan.

Also, at the time of his death, Pasolini was working on a novel, Petrolio, that was clearly based on the mysterious death of Enrico Mattei, the former president of the state oil company ENI, which suggested that the scandal went to the heart of power via the involvement of the illegal masonic lodge Propaganda Due.

Attacks on left-wing activists were relatively common in the 1970s. For example, Franca Rame, the actress wife of the playwright Dario Fo and a prominent member of the Italian Communist Party, was kidnapped and raped by a group of neo-Fascists in 1973.

However, though the Pasolini case was reopened in 2005, no new conclusions were reached.

In 2014 the director Abel Ferrara made a biopic about Pasolini, with Willem Dafoe in the lead role, which was selected to compete for the Golden Lion at the 71st Venice International Film Festival.

The ruins of the Roman city of Ostia Antica are better
preserved than Pompei yet are much less well known

Travel tip:

The seaside resort of Ostia, where Pasolini’s life ended so tragically, lies 30km (19 miles) to the southwest of Rome, situated just across the Tiber river from Fiumicino, home of Rome’s largest international airport. It  adjoins the remains of the ancient Roman city of Ostia Antica, a much-better preserved site than volcano-ravaged Pompei occupying around 10,000 square metres, radiating from a mile-long main street.  There are many houses and apartment blocks, plus warehouses and public buildings, and an impressive amphitheatre.. Many Romans spend their summer holidays in the modern town, swelling a population of about 85,000.

Hotels in Ostia Antica by Booking.com

The church of Santa Croce and San Rocco, where the
funeral for Pier Paolo Pasolina took place in 1975

Travel tip:

Casarsa della Delizia is a town in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region, about 40km (25 miles) west of Udine and about 18km (11 miles) from Pordenone. It is today an important agricultural centre, particularly for wine production, and an important rail hub. Until the end of the Cold War saw numbers reduced, it hosted a large number of Italian military personnel. Pasolini’s funeral took place in the parish church of Santa Croce and San Rocco, before his body was buried in the municipal emetery. The church of Santa Croce and San Rocci contains a cycle of 16th century frescoes by Pomponio Amalteo or by Pordenone.

Look for hotels in and around Casarsa della Delizia with Tripadvisor

More reading:

What made Francesco Rosi one of Italy's most influential film-makers

Why the death of Enrico Mattei remains an unsolved mystery

Laura Betti, the actress and singer who became Pasolini's companion

Also on this day:

1696: The birth of painter Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

1827: The death of scientist Alessandro Volta

1834: The birth of 19th century opera star Marietta Piccolomini

Selected books:

Stories from the City of God: Sketches and Chronicles of Rome 1950-1966, by Pier Paolo Pasolini

A Violent Life (novel), by Pier Paolo Pasolini

(Picture credits: plaque by Renaud Camus; Ostia Antica street by Camelia.boban; church by Intoinside)

Home

4 March

Antonio Vivaldi – Baroque composer

The success and the sadness in the life of musical priest 

Violinist, teacher, composer and cleric Antonio Lucio Vivaldi was born on this day in Venice in 1678. Widely recognised as one of the greatest Baroque composers, he had an enormous influence on music throughout Europe during his own lifetime. His best-known work is a series of beautiful violin concertos called The Four Seasons. Ordained as a priest at the age of 25, he also composed many sacred choral works and more than 40 operas. At the height of his career, Vivaldi received commissions from European nobility and royalty. He moved to Vienna after an invitation to be court composer but after the death of Charles VI he was left with no income or royal protection and died in poverty. Read more…

_______________________________________________________________

Birth of the Italian Constitution

Celebrations in Turin for historic Statute

The Albertine Statute - Statuto Albertino - which later became the Constitution of the Kingdom of Italy, was approved by Charles Albert, King of Sardinia, on this day in 1848 in Turin. The Constitution was to last 100 years, until its abolition in 1948 when the Constitution of the new Italian republic came into effect. Based on the French Charter of 1830, it ensured that all citizens were equal before the law and gave them limited rights of assembly and the right to a free press.  However, it gave voting rights to less than three per cent of the population.  The Statute established the three classic branches of government: the executive, which meant the king, the legislative, divided between the royally appointed Senate and an elected Chamber of Deputies, and a judiciary, also appointed by the king. Read more...

________________________________________________________________

Lucio Dalla - musician

Cantautore inspired by the great Caruso

The singer-songwriter Lucio Dalla - cantautore in Italian - was born on this day in 1943 in Bologna. Dalla is most famous for composing the song, Caruso, which has been covered by many other artists since, including Luciano Pavarotti, Andrea Bocelli and Julio Iglesias. The version of Caruso sung by Pavarotti sold more than nine million copies and Dalla was invited to sing Caruso in a duet with Pavarotti in a 'Pavarotti and Friends' concert in Modena in 1992. According to writer Raffaele Lauro, in his book Caruso the Song - Lucio Dalla e Sorrento, Dalla booked the very suite at the Excelsior Vittoria that Caruso had occupied during the final weeks of his life in 1921 and composed the song while staying there, inspired by his love for Sorrento, his respect for the great tenor and his fondness for classic Neapolitan songs. Read more...

3 March

Charles Ponzi - fraudster

Name forever linked with investment scam


The swindler Charles Ponzi, whose notorious fraudulent investment scheme in 1920s America led his name to be immortalised in the lexicon of financial crimes, was born Carlo Ponzi in the town of Lugo di Romagna on this day in 1882.  Ponzi served several prison sentences in the United States, the heaviest of which was handed down after he tried to sustain an unrealistically generous investment scheme by paying dividends promised to investors who thought they were buying and selling international postal reply coupons with money received from other investors. Read more...

_________________________________________________________________

Teatro Olimpico – Vicenza

Renaissance theatre still stages plays and concerts

The Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza, originally designed by Andrea Palladio, was inaugurated on this day in 1585 with a performance of Oedipus the King by Sophocles, for which the original scenery, which was meant to represent the streets of Thebes, has miraculously survived to this day. One of three Renaissance theatres remaining in existence and since 1994 listed by Unesco as a World Heritage Site, it was the last piece of architecture designed by Andrea Palladio. It was completed after his death by the architect Vincenzo Scamozzi, who is credited with fulfilling Palladio's wish to use perspective in the design, creating the impression that the streets visible through the archways stretched into the distance. Read more…

__________________________________________________________________

Nicola Porpora – composer and teacher

Tutor of celebrated opera singers died in poverty

Nicola Porpora, who composed more than 60 operas and was a brilliant singing teacher in Italy, died on this day in 1768 in Naples. Among his many pupils were poet and librettist Pietro Metastasio, composers Johann Adolph Hasse and Joseph Haydn and the celebrated castrati, Farinelli (Carlo Broschi) and Caffarelli (Gaetano Majorano). He then went to London as chief composer to the Opera of the Nobility, a company that had been formed in opposition to Royal composer George Frideric Handel’s opera company.   He spent time in Vienna, where he taught the young Haydn to compose.  Yet the composer’s last years were spent living in poverty in Naples. Read more…

__________________________________________________________________

Sebastiano Venier – Doge of Venice

Victorious naval commander briefly ruled La Serenissima

Sebastiano Venier, who successfully commanded the Venetian contingent at the Battle of Lepanto, died on this day in 1578 in Venice. He had been Doge of Venice for less than a year when fire badly damaged the Doge’s Palace. He died soon afterwards, supposedly as a result of the distress it had caused him. Venier, who worked as a lawyer and was married to Cecilia Contarini, was listed as procurator of St Mark’s in 1570, but by December of the same year, he was capitano generale da mar, the Admiral of the Venetian fleet, in the new war against the Ottoman Turks. As the commander of the Venetian contingent at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, he helped the Christian League decisively defeat the Turks. Read more...

Home

Charles Ponzi - fraudster

Name forever linked with investment scam

Charles Ponzi set up in business in Boston
having twice previously been in jail

The swindler Charles Ponzi, whose notorious fraudulent investment scheme in 1920s America led his name to be immortalised in the lexicon of financial crimes, was born Carlo Ponzi in the town of Lugo di Romagna on this day in 1882.

Ponzi, who emigrated to the United States in 1903 but arrived there almost penniless, had been in prison twice - once for theft and a second time for smuggling Italian immigrants illegally into the US from Canada - when he came up with his scheme.

Always on the lookout for ways to make a fast buck, Ponzi identified a way to make profits through exploiting the worldwide market in international postal reply coupons.  This was not his scheme, simply the starting point.

These coupons, which allowed a correspondent in one country to pay for the cost of return postage from another country, were sold at a universal cover price but variations in exchange rates meant that a coupon bought in one country might be worth more in another.  Coupons bought in Italy, for example, could be exchanged for stamps in the US that could then be sold for several times more than the dollar-equivalent cost of the coupon in Italy.

The difference was big enough, Ponzi reckoned, to generate as much as 400 per cent profit. He planned to use his profits to fund an investment scheme by which he could offer returns much higher than any available at the mainstream banks and yet make a handsome margin for himself.

Ponzi's natural charm and snappy dress
was very persuasive in attracting clients

It seemed a guaranteed winner. Although his efforts to borrow money to get the venture started did not work out, Ponzi approached some of his wealthier friends in Boston, Massachusetts, where he had married a local Italian girl, Rose Maria Gnecco, and was working as a translator. He promised to double their money within 90 days, or deliver 50 per cent profit in 45 days, and duly did so.

His next step was to set up his own company and attract investment from the wider public. His Securities Exchange Company attracted $1,800 in the first month. Ponzi delivered his clients vast returns as promised. Word quickly spread.

The more investors he was able to satisfy, the longer the queue to join in. By July 1920, only six months after his launch, Ponzi was accepting investments totalling almost $1 million every day.

He spent lavishly, buying a mansion in Lexington and the most expensive car available. He booked a stateroom on an ocean liner to bring his mother to America from her home in Parma.

Unbeknown to his clients, however, Ponzi’s plan to reinvest their money in international reply coupons had been massively flawed at the outset. To generate the profits he needed would have required him to import millions of coupons. In fact, there were only 27,000 in existence.

Ponzi signs a cheque for a delighted investor in his
Boston office in the spring of 1920

Instead, when clients’ investments matured, Ponzi was paying them with money he received from new investors. There was no external profit at all.  Logically, it was foolhardy to continue. Yet with his total of clients growing every day, he always had a surplus of cash and so long as that was the case he could continue in business. In any event, many of his clients simply reinvested their returns.

The problem for Ponzi was schemes that look too good to be true tend to attract the attention of the disbelieving. In this case, it was the Boston Post newspaper, who began to carry articles posing questions about his success.

After one such article, he sued for $500,000 libel damages and won, yet the seeds of doubt had been planted. More investigations followed, investors began to panic and soon Ponzi was paying out more than he was taking in.

The cover of a recent reprint of Ponzi's
 autobiography, written in the 1940s

His final mistake was to hire a former Post journalist, William McMasters, as his publicity agent. McMasters came across documents that showed Ponzi had kept going by effectively ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’. He sold his story to the Post for $5,000.

More panic followed and then an investigation by the Massachusetts Bank Commissioner. It was the beginning of the end for Ponzi. His bankers stopped honouring his cheques and three of his clients filed a petition in court to declare him bankrupt. In November 1920 he was sentenced to five years in jail. His investors had collectively lost around $20 million.

After further prison terms, in between which, while on bail pending an appeal, he attempted to set up a property scam in Florida, he was deported to Italy in 1934. Divorced in 1937 - his wife stayed behind in Boston - he tried various business schemes without success and eventually settled in Brazil, where he died in 1949, although he did first write his autobiography.

Despite Carlo Ponzi’s inevitable demise, countless others down the years have tried to make money using the same methods. The most high-profile example this century involved the financier and investment advisor Bernie Madoff, who was sentenced to 150 years’ jail in 2009 after running a Ponzi Scheme through his Wall Street brokerage that was ultimately outed as the largest financial fraud in US history, worth $64.8 billion.

The Rocca Estense in Lugo di Romagna now serves as
the town's municipal offices

Travel tip:

Lugo di Romagna is a town of 32,000 people about 30km (19 miles) west of Ravenna and 18km (8 miles) north of Faenza in Emilia-Romagna. Its most famous monument, the Rocca Estense (Este Castle), was partially rebuilt during the French occupation in 1500. The interior houses portraits of famous lughesi and a lunette attributed to Mino da Fiesole. It has been Lugo’s town hall since 1797. Also of note is the 19th century covered market hall known as Il Paviglione and the restored 18th century Teatro Rossini. Apart from Ponzi, famous lughesi include the First World War fighter pilot Francesco Baracca and a former world motorcycling champion, Mario Lega.

The Teatro Regio in Parma, while not so well known as La
Scala in Milan, is considered one of Italy's top opera houses

Travel tip:

Parma, where Ponzi claimed to have grown up after his family moved there from Lugo, is an historic city in the Emilia-Romagna region, famous for its Prosciutto di Parma ham and Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, the true ‘parmesan’. In 1545 the city was given as a duchy to the illegitimate son of Pope Paul III, whose descendants ruled Parma till 1731. The composer Giuseppe Verdi was born near Parma at Bussetto and the city has a prestigious opera house, the Teatro Regio.

More reading:

Michele Sindona - the fraudster with links to the Vatican

The mysterious death of Roberto Calvi

Joe Petrosino - the immigrant who became a New York crime fighter

Also on this day:

1578: The death of Venetian doge Sebastiano Venier

1585: The inauguration of Palladio's Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza

1768: The death of composer Nicola Porpora

Selected books:

Ponzi: The Incredible True Story of the King of Financial Cons, by Donald Dunn

The Rise of Mr Ponzi, by Charles Ponzi

(Picture credits: Rocca Estense by Lalupa; Teatro Regio by Stefano Sansavini; via Wikimedia Commons)


Home