IL CINEMA DI PIER PAOLO PASOLINI SECONDO LO STATO. CENSURA, MAGISTRATURA E PARLAMENTO

The thesis examines the types of interventions implemented by Italian State institutions towards Pier Paolo Pasolini's cinema. The perspective of the institutional history of cinema was taken, in consideration of how cinema is part of an industrial context which has effective repercussions on the ways in which the State enters into relations with it. The three areas of intervention of censorship, the judiciary and Parliament have been jointly studied, focusing on cases that have played a significant role in the dialogue and conflict between institutions and culture. Three case studies have been identified, coinciding with the films La ricotta (1963), Teorema (1968) and Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma (1975). An initial phase of alert towards the author's cinema is well represented by the slowdown in the granting of the censorship visa to Accattone. This first part concludes with an in-depth analysis of La ricotta, with attention to the changes made to the film and the questions that were raised around it during the trials in the three orders of judgment for the accusation of contempt of the State religion. A second phase of readjustment of relations between Pasolini and the State opens with Il Vangelo secondo Matteo (1964) and concludes with Teorema, the second case study: both the sentences of the court and the court of Appeal of Venice absolved Pasolini from the first accusation of obscenity for his cinema. The last phase presents an increase of tensions, resulting in the activation of all the major institutional areas for the last film.