The Decameron
“The dirtiest great book in the Western canon,” is how the New Yorker once described Boccaccio’s The Decameron. Which made it a perfect fit for Pier Paolo Pasolini when he set out on his Trilogy of Life, three films based on old texts. The Decameron came first, in 1970, followed by The Canterbury Tales (1974) and Arabian Nights (1974). All three were popular, especially with sex-starved schoolboys suddenly interested in subtitled arthouse. Whether they are arthouse at all is a question for another day – in some quarters subtitling is enough on its own to consign a movie to the outer reaches. Which is ridiculous in the case of the Trilogy of Life, … Read more