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The Canterbury Tales (Il racconti di Canterbury) (1972); The Arabian Nights (Il fiore delle mille e una notte) (1974)

The Arabian Nights (Italy, 1974)
August 25, 2013 - 7:00 pm
Billy Wilder Theater

The Canterbury Tales (Il racconti di Canterbury) (Italy/France, 1972)

Directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini

A retelling of Chaucer’s timeless classic, this film observes the device of the original (bawdy experiences recounted by a band of varied travelers), though with fewer episodes and more explicit effects.  The vivid and lusty feature was shot in England with an Italian and English cast, and celebrates the abundance of sensual adventures and possibilities among the holy and lowly.

Producer: Alberto Grimaldi. Screenwriter: P. Pasolini, based on the stories by Geoffrey Chaucer. Cinematographer: Tonino Delli Colli. Editor: Nino Baragli. Cast: Hugh Griffith, Laura Betti, Ninetto Davoli, Franco Citti, Josephine Chaplin. 

35mm, color, in Italian with English subtitles, 123 min.

Watch the trailer below.

The Arabian Nights (Il fiore delle mille e una notte) (Italy, 1974)

Directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini

The final film in director Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “Trilogy of Life,” filmed in the Middle East and Africa, unfurls exotic sexualities and their emancipatory power. Beginning with the story of a slave girl choosing a master and initiating him sexually, Pasolini develops other narratives, intricately setting stories within stories.  Ravishing and celebratory, the film implicitly caps Pasolini’s embrace of hedonistic answers to modern capitalism and its attendant inhibitions.

Producer: Alberto Grimaldi. Screenwriter: P. Pasolini, with the collaboration of Dacia Maraini, based on tales from “A Thousand and One Nights.” Cinematographer: Giuseppe Ruzzolini. Editor: Nino Baragli, Tatiana Casini Morigi. Cast: Ninetto Davoli, Franco Citti, Franco Merli, Tessa Bouche, Ines Pellegrini. 

35mm, color, in Italian with English subtitles, 148 min. 

Watch the trailer below.

Part of: 
Pure and Impure: The Films of Pier Paolo Pasolini