Photos by Angelo Novi taken during the making of the film.
Pasolini on the set of Il Vangelo secondo Matteo/The Gospel according to St. Matthew. Photos by Angelo Novi taken during the making of the film.
Angelo Novi (1930- 1997) was one the greatest still photographer of the Italian cinema (he worked on the set with Bernardo Bertolucci, Mauro Bolognini, Luigi Comencini, Alberto Lattuada, Sergio Leone, Valerio Zurlini etc.) Talking about his work, he said: “I have never believed the “rules” that some productions imposed or impose, “Never taking picture of an actor turned back, or never blurring the main character…Very often, it happened to me to take good pictures focusing just on a detail and working with the maximum aperture…I believe that the photographer skill is highlighting the material whatever it is: crystal, paper, leather…” For six years, he worked on Pasolini`s sets during the production of eight movies: Mamma Roma (1962), La ricotta (1963) (just for a few days), Comizi d`amore (1964), Il Vangelo secondo Matteo (1964), Uccellacci e uccellini (1966) (just for a few days), La terra vista dalla luna (1967), Che cosa sono le nuvole? (1967) and Teorema (1968). “Il Vangelo secondo Matteo (1964), whose set photos (27) are shown in this exhibition, has marked a change in the cinema of the Poet-Director, not just because for the first time Pasolini was inspired by a literary text, distancing himself from the setting of his novels taking place in the Roman underclass universe, but because he made use of “a completely different technique, the so-called magma. There is no other word (to define it). I mean, instead of using always the same lens, instead of using the same little precise tracking shots, the same panoramic movements etc. etc… I have used the strangest lens and I have put together some close-ups taken with a 25 and with a 100. I have used the entire zoom lens”. The pictures shown in this exhibition – dedicated to Il Vangelo secondo Matteo, – are especially related to the making of the sequences of the Christ Baptism, The Dance of Seven Veils, The last Supper, the Garden of Getsemani. Novi portrayed Pasolini`s physical and intellectual energy in different movements, an energy of gestures and actions always sure and decisive, but anxious, as he appears in the pictures where he is depicted motionless, his body never relaxed but always tense. In each picture but the one where he is portrayed among the Pharisee, the Director wears black glasses, like a defensive shield from the outside and to distance himself from the others. Some pictures represent Pasolini in the natural scenery of the Chia stream, where he was setting up the Christ Baptism sequel. That place, fictionally transformed in the Jordan River of The Gospel is close to the locality of Chia (near Viterbo). This place was particularly dear to the writer, who bought there, some years later, an old medieval tower and added a semicircular building where he often used to go to rest. Novi captured Pasolini`s powerful gestures, as for example in the famous picture where he is bent over his mother, Susanna, in a tender act that remains deep and intimate even on the set public space. We can see a glimpse of the wide smile of the Director while he is bending over his mother, in the whiteness of his shirt. The childish, innocent look that Susanna shows to the photographer becomes the picture fulcrum that condenses in two movements – the son’s body tenderly shielding that of his elderly mother, and the vulnerable force of her eyes turned towards us- the absolute intensity of a relationship, that has dominated for ever, sweetly and dramatically, Pasolini’s life and work. (Roberto Chiesi, Responsabile Centro Studi – Archivio Pier Paolo Pasolini)
Credits: Angelo Novi/Cineteca di Bologna
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