A Slendid Example Neo-Un-Realism.

"Film will only become an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper."-J Cocteau

Pasollini's Accattone (1961) is a film that clearly shows the writer/director was not only uninformed, but even naïve about the social situation to which his film related. This film is so detached from the slum life of the big city, and the realities of the life of pimps and prostitutes that it could better be called an example of Un-Realism, than Neo-Realism.

This filmmaker couldn't even stage a good street fight, just showing two guys rolling around in the street locked in bear hugs.

The protagonist's first prostitute is portrayed getting a broken leg, and is soon shown thereafter walking around with a cast on the leg, yet with no limp, or crutches. Sorry, but having a broken leg doesn't work that way.

This first prostitute is shown getting badly beaten, yet then is shown in the police station without a bruise on her. Now that Neo-Un-Realism, if I ever saw it.

That the protagonist is shown almost starving after his only hooker is jailed is just STUPID. Pimps are street savvy guys who have more than one girl in their stable, and are street smart enough to make money in a variety of ways besides pimping.

I could go on and on, but what's the point? The costumes, the characters, and dialogue is nothing close to appropriate for the social situation that this film is supposedly portraying. This filmmaker obviously never entered the slums of a big city, and never met real pimps and prostitutes. He was making a supposedly realistic account of a social scene of which he was obviously ignorant.

This is the first Pasollini film that I've viewed, and it's his first film that he made. But solely on the basis of viewing his first film, I really don't think that this guy showed enough here to merit a second chance.