Il film “Uccellacci e uccellini” è sostanzialmente una riflessione filosofica sul tragico senso dell’esistenza, sotto forma di una favola.
Vari sono i risvolti formali dell’opera, che si possono notare uniti nel linguaggio filmico del neorealismo di impronta manieristica (si parla di manierismo pasoliniano): ad esempio, gli sguardi estatici dei personaggi, il tema della legend blends with reality in a sublime irony, however, the same people who interpret the scenes as if they were entering, moving within or come out of paintings or frescoes, architectural details, the refinement of manners (especially medieval) and shots of landscapes, the classical references: Literary and religious ( Canticle of the Sun and Gospels), philosophical (Pascal and the relationship between faith and science), pictorial (Pontormo, Rosso Fiorentino, but also Masaccio .. .), music (Mozart).
are equally complex content the film. Among the several levels, the most obvious is that of a comic story that connects, so apparently clear and simple, the philosophical arguments: three characters (a father, a son, a bird) walking and talking, until the two men eat the talking crow. But, as in every fairy tale, as well as the deceptive simplicity of the plot, there emerges dall'irrealtà and surreal elements all other meanings of the work, sometimes explained by its third protagonist, the crow, the most symbolic, the alter ego of director himself: according to the script, it is a left-wing intellectual, son of "Mr. Doubt" (P. Ricoeur position between the masters of the School of the suspicion, and then the doubt, Karl Marx) and "Mrs. Conscience" (the consciousness of what? Of course class consciousness! The theme of consciousness, after Hegel, is even more development along the nineteenth century) .
At this point, it seems more clear the title of: The Hawks are the bourgeoisie and the proletariat are the birds. Between these two classes, whose consciousness generates intellectual (and therefore the birth of the Communist Party and its international) there will never be peace, or rather there will never be "Love." But there will be only and always a struggle: the class struggle. Even after Christianity has sought the possible conversion of the individual, the two classes can never communicate with each other because they express themselves with language antithetical: the screeching hawks and sparrows hopping. Rooms are the attempts of the Church, represented by St. Francis, another Christ, to bring peace on earth in this struggle continues.
But the most emblematic bird is the raven-philosopher: he and his prophet is saying is not understood by the prophetic ignorant masses, that is despised by the petty bourgeoisie of mockery because he does not understand, father and son, Toto and Ninetto do not like to hear about the prophet of misfortune, whose origin is the 'ideology' itself. They are the sons of the apparent simplicity and innocence of the wild, the more cynical ignorance, which will push them into a struggle for survival, place them in an endless chain where it tends to subdue those who are submissive. The two protagonists do not respect the rights of others, "critical of" private property but only for their bodily needs, typically related to their animal nature (homo homini lupus ). But Toto and Ninetto not understand the teachings of the body and are, in turn, oppressed by the ruling class, which does not include customs, traditions, namely that language, from which only stupidly fascinated.
If we enter into the labyrinth of the other meanings of the work, we only mentioned the issues of birth control and contraception (contraceptive ...), the existence of immigration and immigrants (the sale the "callifugo "...), of progress and technology (the landing on the moon ...), the crisis of culture and literature (the Congress of Dentists-Dantists ...), the question of language, which the literary works and devotes many debates Pasolini (use of popular idioms and dialects, as opposed to Italian caught), superstition (votive offerings).
Another layer of symbols characterizing the film: the path is "eternal". The film begins when the two main characters, father and son, already walking and ends when they walk again, the trip is already over, so the purpose of the journey, which is the existence, life, finds no satisfaction. The trip is an alienation, which allows cheating, a flight because there is so tragic to lose its meaning. On the road of life, just because the protagonists face death and accept each other without talking about it. But here is who can get right to understand it, the crow, because, as a good prophet, he knows that is killed thanks to his two traveling companions, the trip already done just the way it started. I lost many buses are the delays, failures, the inability to make the journey in life and therefore to understand its meaning.
The moon is the only hope, so far, and unattainable, though in those years has been reached ... The man is believed to back to the center of the universe? The moon is therefore alienation, understood as an escape from reality, escape to the absurd, as the term itself a pioneer in the history of cinema What is G. Méliès ( Journey to the Moon, 1902) but even before L. Ariosto ( Astolfo on the moon). The prostitute named Luna is the refuge in the pleasures of life for Toto and Ninetto who, fleeing the harsh reality, they waste the money enough only to their small pleasures and pains to their children, debt. Two planes take off, when the protagonists meet the moon phallic symbols, but also an allegory of this easy escape from the world of the oppressed and exploited.
The journey began on the highway under construction in the outskirts of Rome ... The invitation to escape is also expressed by surreal road signs that indicate the symbolic city far away ... (Istanbul, indeed, "Istanbul" and Cuba) also the signs to the streets of the suburb of Rome remember simple men, unfamiliar with symbolic names. The strolling players interpret a show on ancient Rome that has ruined the world.
found in "The Hawks and the Sparrows" several tributes to great cinema: Toto and Ninetto recall movements and dialogues chapliniani characters, you can also see elements of Fellini in the characteristics of some grotesque characters.
Pasolini explicitly revealed the religious background of this and other films with a series of citations and references, which refer to events in the Gospels. Just look The Gospel according to Matthew to grasp some of the angel Gabriel, the Annunciation, is played in the movie by the same actress in "The Hawks and the Sparrows" is the girl with angel wings, to religious recitation. Also in Hawks and the Sparrows are , filigree, clear outline of the path of the Gospel. The raven says, "Blessed are you ..." in reference to the simple, taking the Beatitudes (Matthew, 5); la cacciata dei mercanti al tempio è collocata nel film durante la leggenda di san Francesco, il quale cita Il Capitale di Karl Marx: volutamente Pasolini, giocando con i contrasti, accosta i due estremi, come già ha fatto nel film Il Vangelo secondo Matteo , ove fa risuonare i canti rivoluzionari russi mentre il Cristo parla alle folle. La gente che è radunata a causa di una morte, in Uccellacci e uccellini , dà lo spunto per la riflessione dell’autore sull’esistenza, ma ricorda la folla dei racconti evangelici che chiedeva i miracoli al Cristo che risuscitava i morti.
L’incontro con la prostituta è presente anche negli Evangeli, così come l’annuncio profetico della propria morte fatto dal Cristo e dal corvo parlante in Uccellacci e uccellini . Se l’ultima cena è anticipazione della Passione e della Morte di Cristo, negli Evangeli, nel film è subita dal corvo che viene mangiato: coincidono con la cena, la passione, la morte in termini religiosi, psicologici e anche antropologici (la ripresa del pasto totemico di S. Freud in Totem e tabù ...).
Anche nei Accattone film Mamma Roma and are evoked the same path Gospel (Angelo - Passion - Last Supper - Death). The three enigmatic characters reminiscent of the three persons of the Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit (the latter represented by a white dove, normally). But after the death, according to Marxist atheism is no life, and then the bird is, at the same time, the clumsy and gloomy picture fallen angel, whose black color is disturbing and inconsistent with its sweetness, with its fragility but especially with his wit. The crow calls the cockroach of Kafka's memory that evokes foreboding, as it appeared, directly due thought to die no accident that the raven is introduced into the discourse when the father and son (symbol of life going on in generations) reflect on death.
Another set of references, both of content and style, goes to the classics: certainly appear typical elements of theater of the absurd (S. Beckett, Waiting for Godot ) and also references to M. Cervantes (Don Quixote ). But fundamental is the revival of a style beloved by Aesop, Phaedrus, and then to La Fontaine, who put on the mouth animal, sometimes just a crow, the suggested words from the minds of men they are often more fierce than those of animals. In this case, the crow is the most innocent of innocents, rather it is the innocent victim of them. The man appears to be subject to the beast, but in the end, only by behaving like the beast, the beast dominates the contrary of the 'human man "embodied by Ciccillo monk, whose sum is expressed in the thought that his idealistic and philanthropic Song Things , immediately contradicted by reality (it is detached from Feuerbach to Marx). B. Pascal said: "man non è né angelo né bestia; disgrazia vuole che chi vuol fare l’angelo fa la bestia” (P ensieri , 358).
Il tema dell’albatro (o del gabbiano), le cui ali troppo grandi imprigionate nella tolda di una nave lo portano alla lenta morte e all’impossibilità di spiccare il volo, è notoriamente attribuito a C. Baudelaire e a S.T. Coleridge: sono references in Accattone are enclosed but obviously here in the Crow Hawks and the Sparrows.
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Another level of interpretation is the historical-political history of Russian communism from the references mentioned, including music, the International, K. Marx, the Italian Communist Party which Pasolini joined the tribute to P. Togliatti, in Mao's China and the Encyclical "Pacem in Terris" of Pope John XXIII: they are only a few quotes and cameos that express, in addition to obtaining the free, self-criticism Pasolini, on its shape and inadequate not including the left-wing intellectual who turns just as critical to his party and the Church.
Dario Coppola
The official site Pasolini published on this review already appeared on the website of the Cultural Quintilian August 2010
