A package from the UK’s Masters of Cinema arrived today. It contained one new addition, MoC’s limited edition two-fer of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “Hawks and Sparrows” and “Pigsty,” plus a restock of Andrew Bujalski’s “Computer Chess.”
As a young communist, Pasolini was heavily influenced by the Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci while making his first three features: “Accatone,” “Mamma Roma,” and “The Gospel According to Matthew.” However, by the time of his fourth picture, “Hawks and Sparrows,” the neorealistic approach and working class subject matter he’d handled so masterfully no longer reflected an Italian society that was in the throes of a postwar industrial boom. “I distanced myself from Gramsci because, objectively, I no longer had before me the world Gramsci had,” Pasolini said.
From there, Pasolini’s work became more allegorical, employing symbolic elements such as the talking crow that joins the father-son duo of “Hawks and Sparrows” on their journey. At one point, the crow is described by a set of titles as being “a left-wing intellectual of the kind found living before Palmiro Togliatti’s death.” Togliatti was the Italian Communist Party’s undisputed leader for over thirty years, and the documentary footage in “Hawks and Sparrows” is from his funeral. Without getting into spoilers, between Pasolin’s feelings about Gramsci and what happens with the travelers and the crow, there’s a sense the director was trying to symbolize his countrymen’s assimilation of Italian communism’s beneficial elements while also emphasizing the need to continue growing and learning in order to adeptly tackle the new reality they were facing.