grantss Has its moments but mostly uneven, with atrocious performances.Nine stories from Giovanni Boccaccio's novel of the same name. Directed and written by Pier Paulo Pasolini.Some of the stories are interesting, even amusing but none of them really hit the mark in a big way. Most feel anti-climatic, and needing of more substance. Some are just plain pointless and/or over before they've even started. There are some recurrent themes, especially those of morality and religion, but nothing really gets tied up. I kept hoping for something that would connect all the different stories, to make them collectively profound, but nothing came. The closing line of the movie was one rare moment of profundity though, but it didn't really have a context.Then there's the acting. The performances in this movie are incredibly bad. Think primary school play bad. There's a handful of exceptions but it's a cringefest from start to finish.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU On a sunny day in Naples, a rich young man comes to the market to buy horses. He is tricked by a woman into believing he is her brother and he ends in the tank of the toilet, robbed and soiled. But escaping that trap he finds himself in the street and the scene turns fantastic. The women from their windows tell him to disappear and the men in the street tell him just the same. So there he runs away dressed in his underwear soaked in and perfumed with human feces. His descent to hell in a way. He hides from some nocturnal men in a barrel in some underground cellar but not for long. The men are thieves and they hire him on a mission and there the real film really starts. You will have to go and see it if you want to get the details. Who will die and who will survive, that is THE question in this cruel world. In this film you have to go down into all kinds of holes, tombs, caves, cellars. Pasolini has rewritten Boccaccio with the pen of Dante and he settles accounts with the church first of all, that Italian church that is rich though doing nothing, by doing nothing and exploiting the whole society. And society is then engaged in a simple game, that of recuperating all they can from that church, be it a benediction, be it an absolution, be it a rite of some sort but also some of the stolen money they carry in their clerical purses. So Pasolini makes his characters steal from the dead bishop, and thus steal from his stealing surviving mates. Then they steal from the people in the street, purse pickers they are. They steal some good cheer, comfort, and pleasure from the hypocritical nuns, at least as long as youth grants the young man with enough potency and power and hardness to be able to satisfy the hunger of twenty nuns. They make false confessions not to save their souls but to look good in society when they die and save some trouble to their friends. And of course they steal as much pleasure as they can and absolutely disregard the idea that it may be a sin. Never mind the sin provided we have the pleasure. And this Italy is the Italy of all crimes, of all murders and embezzlements. And of course they all manage to get through but Hell is the destination of them all and the vision of that Hell is superb and in the tradition of its representations in the churches of the end of the 15th century, after the big plague, the Black Death. And yet poetry haunts this film in the very excess it demonstrates. Excess in the language, intonations that you have to enjoy in Italian of course, but also excess in the body language, especially, but not only, facial language. These Italians speak with their full bodies, particularly their hands and their faces. Excess in desire and passion, violence and hypocrisy. Even the morbidity of some scenes becomes artistic in its extreme sadness. And his vision of Hell is superb. Scatology transformed into a great art and that's just the point. The end of the film is the final vision of the fresco some master painter was painting in a church. That painter is the one who had the vision of hell but he transformed it into a civil and elegant scene full of majesty and nobility. He can regret the vision that was so beautiful but he could not render it on the wall of the church. A beautiful film though maybe slightly nostalgic and restrained, which means not entirely free-wheeling along the easy road Pasolini would have liked to be able to take but did not take entirely or in full light.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines

Cristian "But i wonder. Why create a work of art when dreaming about it is so much sweeter?" Pier Paolo Pasolini in his "Decameron" Pasolini's "Il Decameron" is based in the stories that told us Boccaccio in his book with the same name. This short stories are of passion, loves, luster, deceits, sex and sins. But is too the artist internal conflict.The wonderful of this Pasolini's "Il Decameron" which begin Pasolini's "Trilogy of Life" that is compound by this one, "Racconti di Canterbury" (1971) and "Arabian Nights" (1974) is the impressive way to capture the nature (As going to be regular in the films of this trilogy). The story that told us here are very interesting, and without a doubt, each of one makes you think. Some are funny and sometimes shameless. Others are sad and full of feelings like love. The first story told us about the fool Adreuccio and how he becomes rich with a lot of s**t on him... since her, you going to watch and hear interesting stories that represents how the human been is sometimes.I never (No matter if they paid me a lot of cash for it) going to say that Pasolini and his work are scandalous. For me, this is true art. I think that Pasolini, in the character of the artist, want to tell to the world about the inspiration of an artist and at the same time, the passion of an artist. And, if you don't know it yet, Pasolini is one of the best and most important thinkers of the XX century. And he truly deserves that title. A real artist.Pasolini's "Decameron" is a very interesting work of art. And, at the same time, teach me think twice before when my wife (That i don't have yet) orders that enter in a big vase.*Sorry for the mistakes. Well, if there any.

Lee Eisenberg I remember that I first heard of Pier Paolo Pasolini in John Waters's "Cecil B. Demented", and I interpreted that he was a very arty, non-mainstream director. I then read about how he always infuriated the Catholic Church, and they often took him to court (I get the feeling that his open homosexuality might have also gotten to them), and was brutally murdered in 1975.So, I've finally seen one of his movies. "Il Decameron" (or "The Decameron", depending on which language you want to use) tells several stories of life in a medieval-to-Renaissance Italian village. There's lots of sex to go around (especially in places where it's not supposed to happen), and any gross thing that you can think of will probably happen. But believe you me, Pasolini knows how to make it fascinating; after all, who doesn't love some debauchery now and then? So anyway, this is definitely the sort of movie that you would watch for film history classes and things like that. Not at all a movie for the world's straight-laced factions. But I certainly liked it, and not just because Caterina was really hot. This movie is an important part of film history, Italian history, and other things. You just might want to go to Italy after watching it.