All language subtitles for Dante Ferretti

The most important thing
Pasolini taught me

was to see cinema
with a painter's eyes.

Minimalist cinema.

I began studying in Rome
at the Academy of Fine Arts,

and later I met an architect.

The name of this architect
and family friend

was Aldo Tomassini Barbarossa.

He was a great set designer
back in Blasetti's time.

He'd actually been
in Los Angeles

to work 0n
Androcles and the Lion.

He was a friend of my father.

One day he said, “I know
you want to be a set designer.”

He was working on a film
by Domenico Paolella,

a pirate film
to be shot in Ancona.

I thought, “I'm headed back
to Le Marche - I just left there!”

But I was really very happy.

So I started working
as assistant on this film

for which they reconstructed -

reconstructed
a whole piece of the Caribbean

on the fair grounds in Ancona.

So that was my start,
and after that I met -

Since the director of production
was very happy with me,

and work was to begin on Pasolini's
The Gospel According to St. Matthew...

he recommended me
to the set designer,

an extremely famous set designer
at the time, Luigi Scaccianoce.

So this was
my first encounter with Pasolini,

on The Gospel
According to St. Matthew.

It was an extraordinary
adventure.

But before The gospel

I remember that, back in Ancona,
one day we all went to see

Accarrone,
which had just been released.

The whole cast
and crew of the film

got together that night
to see Accattone.

I remember being
very impressed with the film

and with Tonino delli Colli's
cinematography,

the washed-out
black and white.

I remember that the cinematographer
was there, and he said,

“It was shot with a Ferrania camera.”
Technical details.

I remember

all that very well now,

because it really impressed me.

And especially because
it had been a sign,

because soon after that,
my second film,

as assistant set designer, of course,
was St. Matthew,

shot by Tonino delli Colli.

I remember I was thinking
of making Salo' in the style...

in the style of Sironi.

L've always liked empty spaces.

These towns where you see

only buildings and things,
the empty streets.

So I got to Mantua.

ll' was a very foggy day, 0f course.
You could hardly see a thing.

We set out in a car
to see country houses and such.

There was this enormous plain
where there was nothing.

I mean,
you could see very little.

The plain of the Po Valley.

We saw these country houses
and went inside.

He says, “Perhaps
we can do something here.”

I looked around. “Here?”

They were old country farmhouses,
full of straw and stuff.

“Let's ask.
Maybe they'II let us transform it.”

He wanted
this old country house

where these four men gathered

and brought the young kids.

We went inside
and asked the owner,

the farmer with his family,
if they'd move somewhere else,

and we changed
the interior completely.

We began
stripping away everything:

years and years of tradition
and things.

This family had accumulated
maybe centuries' worth of -

It was a family of farmers.

We took it all away,

and I brought in the most
improbable, impossible things.

Things we'd made
in Fascist style, Deco style.

I began designing
all these mirrors and chandeliers,

some of them phallic in design.

Carpets that had been recreated,

and furniture
from the '30s and '40s,

Italian and even French in style.

We introduced this whole
Fascist period into a house

that before had been
an Italian farmer's country house.

So this was the contrast.

Color was
a very important factor.

We used a lot of
that famous red,

what I called “Fascist red,”

partly Pompeian red and partly the red
from Mussolini's Foro italico stadium.

It was a color I really liked.

One very important element
was the paintings.

There were these large rooms
with all these paintings

censored during that period.

We redid the frescoes
0n the walls a la Leger.

ll' was a whole series 0f images,
one on lop 0f the other,

that told the story
of that period.

You might call it
a “graphic” film.

In Italian, a setting

packed with tons of stuff
is often called scenografico.

With Pasolini
it was just the opposite.

The art direction
was always minimalist.

Film was always seen
like a painting.

The first time I worked
with him, I asked,

“Why do we always approach it
like a painting?”

He said, “Because
what's a painter really do?”

A painting - and they've always
been my inspiration -

does away with all frills.

Painting everything
would take forever.

So you include the essentials,
the symbolic.

So the graphic element
was very important.

Pasolini was a writer,

a poet,

a storyteller.

As a director
in the sense 0f the person

whose job it is
to tell the story,

he wasn't considered
a great master.

He was in regard
to what he always said,

what he always espoused.

Yet he was always
breaking with tradition.

He's still spoken of today.
He was the greatest.

I have to say, having made
so many other films,

every time I made
a film with him...

he was an entirely different
type of director.

A different personality
and way of telling a story.

He never moved the camera.

He had a way 0f telling a story
from a still point.

At one point he got
fascinated with the camera

and wanted
to man it himself.

So his first films
using a handheld camera

could sometimes
make you a little dizzy,

because he used the camera
like he'd use

his own head,
his own thoughts.

He moved it in a way -

It was a way of following the action
from a certain point of view.

ll' was always a specific style,
i. a. , a non-style.

A non-style
that is its own style.

I always remember Pasolini
the same way:

the tremendous appetite for work,
the race he was always running.

A hundred shots a day.
His wa y 0f telling a story.

On this film I think
he was a bit more agitated.

I have to think back now,

because for a while
I didn't want to think about it,

because of the shock involved,

whether seeing the film
or from the personal story.

I saw the film
two days after Pasolini died.

I was seeing it
for the first time,

and of course that first time
was terribly painful.

I remembered
when we made the film.

That atmosphere came back to me,
all the violence in the film.

The memory of the violence
of Pasolini's death

was a very hard blow.

I haven't watched the film again.

I 've seen stills
from it very often,

but I haven't watched
the film again.

I wanted
to gain some distance

from what was Pasolini's physical end -
but not an emotional end.

Maybe one of these days
I'II finally watch it again.

I just needed a little time.