Product Description

Pier Paolo Pasolini Collection, Vol. 2 a collection of Pasolini's works (Accatone / The Hawks and the Sparrows / The Gospel According to Saint Matthew) in a three disk dvd box set.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #74158 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-07-22
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Box set, Black & White, DVD, Full Screen, Letterboxed, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
• Original language: Italian
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 3
• Running time: 346 minutes

From the Back Cover
This special three disc set contains: Accattone, The Hawks and the Sparrows, and the Gospel According to St. Matthew - all available for the first time on DVD. Accattone, Pasolini's first film, is a harrowing realistic and unsentimental look inside the slums of Rome, where prostitutes, hustlers and petty thieves attempt to eke out an existence any way they can. The Hawks and the Sparrows, features Italy's stone-faced clown Toto as an Everyman who travels the road of life accompanied by his empty-headed son, and a talking crow, waxing philosophical on the passing scene. Oedipus Rex was filmed in and around an awesome 15th century adobe city in the Moroccan desert. Pasolini's version retains the basic elements of the Sophocles tragedy. A young man, abandoned at birth by his parents, is foretold of his doomed fate by an oracle; nonetheless he murders his father and marries his mother.

Customer Reviews

Yet more misfires from Waterbearer
Unfortunately, Waterbearer didn't correct any of the problems that plagued their first set of Pasolini DVD's: the transfers are all sub-par, with burned-in subtitles (that are sometimes very wrong: did you know that one of the ten commandments is "thou shalt not steel"?) and no chapter stops. The discs are overpriced, especially considering that, despite what it says on the back of the case, none of the discs appear to have undergone any restoration whatsoever.

Pasolini was a master filmmaker, and it's a shame that only one of his films (The Decameron) has a quality Region 1 release. The others (the six released by Waterbearer and Vanguard's release of Medea) are poor transfers that simply don't do justice to this great man's life work.

For now, however, Pasolini fans stuck in Region 1 (I understand superior editions of most of his films exist in Region 2) are limited to these sub-par releases. If you're a Pasolini fan, I'd advise you to buy the discs used, because what Waterbearer's asking for these discs is ridiculous.

1 masterpiece, 1 exceptional film & 1 controversial fable
This three-film box set includes Pasolini's exceptional debut film (ACCATTONE), his first masterpiece - one of the greatest films I have seen (THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MATTHEW), plus his controversial political fable (THE HAWKS AND THE SPARROWS). I have written about these DVDs individually elsewhere at Amazon.com. Each disc includes the same half-hour 1970 documentary on Pasolini, but no other features. The Pasolini Foundation in Rome, which controls all rights to these films, supplied the prints: good quality for ACCATTONE and HAWKS but not for THE GOSPEL (my Amazon review offers a suggestion on how to adjust your TV to make it look better). The Pasolini Foundation also had the U.S. distributor release the DVDs without any chapters (i.e., in one continuous track), to encourage people to watch each picture in its entirety. Despite those limitations, all these films are very much worth seeing.