African American Comedy
Animation
Black Comedy
British
Classic Comedies
Comic Criminals
Cult Classics
Documentaries, Real & Fake
Farce
Frighteningly Funny
Gay & Lesbian
General
Kids & Family
Military & War
Musicals
Parody & Spoof
Romantic Comedies
Satire
School Days
Screwball Comedy
Series & Sequels
Slapstick
Sports
Stand-Up
Teen
Television
Urban
|
 |
The Decameron |
List Price: $24.99
Your Price: |
 |
|
|
|
| Product Info |
Reviews |
Features:
Description:
A collection of bawdy tales from Boccaccio, adapted and directed by the taboo-busting Pier Paolo Pasolini--sounds irresistible, doesn't it? Pasolini approaches the material not like a literary classic to be reverently served, but rather as if the various anecdotes were episodes from scruffy, everyday life in medieval Italy, caught on the fly, like neighborhood gossip recounted in a taverna. The film is black-sheep kin to the director's amateur-theatrical take on Scripture, The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964); both films abound in earthy settings framing vivid faces that might have gazed out of a Renaissance painting. Yet where Gospel was searing, The Decameron is perfunctory. Most of the stories dribble away absentmindedly before they've even begun to establish a situation, let alone any tension. Pasolini himself reappears periodically as an artist--Giotto--planning an epic cathedral painting. At the end, he's still thinking about it and wondering, "Maybe it's enough to dream a masterpiece rather than paint it." Which seems a handy copout for not really making the film we've been trying to watch. --Richard T. Jameson
|
|
|
|
