Pier Paolo Pasolini: The Poet of Contamination: Arabian Nights Review - NP Approved

Arabian Nights (1974)

Cast: Ninetto Davoli, Franco Citti, Franco Merli
Director: Pier Paolo Pasolini
Country: Italy | France
Genre: Comedy | Drama | Fantasy
Official Site: Here

Editor’s Notes: The following review is part of our coverage for TIFF’s Pier Paolo Pasolini: The Poet of Contamination which runs from March 8th to April 12th at TIFF Bell Lightbox. For more information on upcoming TIFF film series visit http://tiff.net and follow TIFF on Twitter at @TIFF_NET.

In the final film of his “Trilogy of Life” series, Arabian Nights, Pier Paolo Pasolini creates a masterful epic that achieves the cinematic grandiosity of Giovanni Pastrone’s 1914 Cabiria with larger than life locales filled with intricate details while simultaneously grounding the film in more tangible realities with sexuality and the aesthetic intrigue of the nude human form. History becomes the source of cinematic inspiration more than an outline of events and Pasolini’s adaptation of the ancient Arabic texts of The Book of One Thousand and One Nights is filled with the director’s signature stylistic flourishes, comedic sensibilities, and sexual preoccupations. He brings every frame to life with texture and light, using location shooting and innumerable extras to create rich and colorful worlds filled with wonderment and intrigue that capture astonishingly beautiful vistas in Africa and the Middle East. The locations are found in the real world and not in a studio backlot, and Pasolini traverses the globe to find locations steeped in ancient mysticism that is imbued into the sand and stones that bask in the light of impossibly blue skies.

He brings every frame to life with texture and light, using location shooting and innumerable extras to create rich and colorful worlds filled with wonderment and intrigue that capture astonishingly beautiful vistas in Africa and the Middle East.

The first story begins in a bustling Middle Eastern bazaar where Pasolini’s cinematic prowess becomes immediately apparent as golden light pours through threadbare canopies to create miracles of dancing light that illuminates the faces of every extra. Ancient stone walls and period specific artifacts add rich textures to each frame as a slave girl and inexperienced young man learn the essentials of biology, the inexperience of the actors readily apparent in the undeceiving timidity of their eyes. Pasolini’s use of nonprofessional actors makes sense in the context of dramas that take place in 1960s and 1970s Italy as they are intimately acquainted with the lives and attitudes of the characters they are portraying, but with these scenes of nervous and inexperienced lovers we can see that his method works for any setting as Pasolini captures raw, soul-baring earnestness and uncomfortable facial expressions exchanged between first time lovers since the beginning of time.

Another tale takes us to a nomadic African tribe where attitudes toward sexuality are free from Western taboo as same sex encounters aren’t stigmatized and are seen as a method of social advancement among young men. The nomadic tribe setting provides ample territory for filmic exploration and Pasolini’s camera explores the unending sea of lavish tents adorned with golden accents and richly textured tapestries finding incomparable beauty spawned from atypical ways of life. The nomads travel in caravans of camels, the entire population carrying every worldly possession through the unforgiving desert as they search for the next temporary refuge, passing under trees that paint the frame with impressionistic brushstrokes of rare and unusual colors. Once they establish their new impromptu city in the dunes their attention is diverted to more primal needs as they engage in hedonistic acts of necessary decompression. Demented tribal leaders see themselves as gods as they drug their younger subjects and play games of sexual matchmaking as they look down from balconies and reap voyeuristic delights, satisfied with their perverted wisdom and sexual sagacity.

Pasolini explores the candid beauty of the human form and despite the grandiosity of the stories and settings within the film he captures moments of raw honesty as his actors awkwardly exchange uncertain glances like first time lovers on the precipice of sexual discovery…

The third story follows Pasolini regular Ninetto Davoli as he attempts to unravel the mysteries of communicating with the opposite sex as a beautiful young woman captures his attention with enigmatic eyes that glimmer with seduction in the midday sun. He was set to be married to his less attractive cousin but the rapturous beauty of the mysterious woman has changed his plans, and with his would be wife’s assistance he is able to unravel the substance of the mystery woman’s perplexing gestures. The moon casts its melancholic light over the young man as it transforms from crescent to full, a poetic flourish to signify the passage of time. He finally unlocks the code to win over the mysterious enchantress and the two exhaust the limitless possibilities of sexuality with ritualistic thoroughness, but Ninetto’s Aziz eventually discovers that there is more to love than the frivolity of sexual attraction and the fleeting bliss of raw lust.

Arabian Nights exhibits an unparalleled mastery of cinematic technique and creates astonishingly beautiful frames filled with intricate details that bring the mythical to life. Pasolini explores the candid beauty of the human form and despite the grandiosity of the stories and settings within the film he captures moments of raw honesty as his actors awkwardly exchange uncertain glances like first time lovers on the precipice of sexual discovery, ignoring the advice of prophets and the wisdom of elders as most of life’s lessons can only be learned through firsthand missteps.

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Matthew Blevins

Director of Home Entertainment & Sr. Staff Film Critic

Behind me you see the empty bookshelves that my obsession with film has caused. Film teaches me most of the important concepts of life, such as cynicism, beauty, ugliness, subversion of societal norms, and what it is to be a tortured member of humanity. My passion for the medium is an important part of who I am as I stumble through existence in a desperate and frantic search for objective truths.

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