Pasolini, un delitto italiano

Feature about the events immediately following the murder of Pier Paolo Pasolini. Pasolini, who was an important scriptwriter, novelist, essayist and film critic as well as film-maker and one of the greatest post-war poets, is something like a martyr in Italy. His death marks the end of an era in Italian history. Events, in short: during a November night in 1975 Pasolini is run over in Ostia, a coastal resort near Rome, by 17-year-old Pino Pelosi, the boy who Pasolini had picked up in town to have sex with him for money. Pelosi admitted the murder and told the police that he had acted in self-defence, when Pasolini’s advances became too aggressive, in his view. Director Marco Tullio Giordana larded his feature film with a torrent of information and commentary. He filled in the holes in the story of Pelosi with exchanges between policemen, reporters and other male prostitutes like Pelosi. The police and the judges involved plan to close the file as the umpteenth gay murder, but one of the police inspectors and Pasolini’s family lawyer won’t leave things be and try to place the murder in a broader context. Who’s interest was served by the murder? Was it a plot, a political murder, was the Maffia involved? The film does not try to reveal the truth, according to the maker, but is more interested in finding out why the truth has never been revealed and why it probably never will.