Review of La rabbia di Pasolini

In recent years there's been renewed interest in what French writer/director Roger Leenhardt called back in the 40s the "essay film." Pasolini made an early stab at it with his hour long half of the 1963 La Rabbia (Anger) which did not receive a regular release at the time. Giuseppe Bertolucci (Bernardo's brother) came out with this reconstruction in 2008. Because we see two different versions of material from Italian newsreels covering the period after World War II through the early 60s, the layout is a bit confusing, and the commentary mostly by Pasolini, part poetry, part prose read by different voices in both segments is occasionally obtrusive. One longs to simply look at these historic images without having to deal with the dense text. The director concentrates on the contrast between a peasant world, that of the past, which he clearly identifies with, and the modern bourgeois world, which he critiques. He expresses hope (despite the terror he acknowledges accompanies them) in the liberation movements of people of color we see clips of from around the world-newly independent African countries but also Cuba. Pasolini's view of the Soviet Union is sympathetic, but there's an interesting passage involving an elderly tour guide steering the common folk of Russia through an art museum with specimens of the now frowned upon Socialist Realism.Pasolini mentions how such peasant types are being exposed to culture (a good thing) but then launches into a plea for a more radical art, examples of which(Ben Shahn, Georg Grosz) we next see in a striking switch from black and white to color. I quote from Sam Rohdie's translation: "We must begin again from the beginning, from where there is no certainty, and the sign is desperate, and the color strident, and the figures writhe...") The section of the film that the director had the most affection for later, but which seems to date the most, is a gushing tribute to the then just deceased Marilyn Monroe.In all of this Pasolini anticipates the later essay films of Godard, who would be even more playful with the juxtaposition of borrowed images and new sound.As a bonus, Bertolucci's restoration includes some related clips including a hilarious TV takeoff on Pasolini, a kind of Italian "Saturday Night Live."