Translation as De-canonization: Matthew's Gospel According to Pasolini - filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini - Critical Essay

Cross Currents, Wntr, 2002 by George Aichele

(3.) I refer in this article to the English subtitled version of II Vangelo Secondo Matteo (Rome: Arco Film S.r.L., 1964).

(4.) Pia Friedrich, Pier Paolo Pasolini (Boston: Twain Publishers, 1982), 125, n. 15. The selective capitalizing of certain nouns (such as "Kingdom" and "Heaven") in the film's subtitles also tends to stress a dogmatic dimension that is less emphatic in the spoken dialogue.

(5.) Language and Literature, ed. Krystyna Pomorska and Stephen Rudy (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1987), 429, Jakobson's emphasis.

(6.) Illuminations, 82.

(7.) Ibid., 80.

(8.) Ibid., 217-51. For those who access this movie on videotape or digital disc, or by means of a TV channel, the video presentation has also "translated" the film into yet another medium. Thus there are many different translations at work here, all at once.

(9.) On printing as a technology of reproduction, see Benjamin, Illuminations, 219, as well as 83-109.

(10.) Ibid., 238.

(11.) Paul de Man, The Resistance to Theory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), 96-97. The film version of the entire dialogue that appears in Matthew 22:24-32 lacks subtitles, forcing the viewer who knows no Italian into precisely this situation.

(12.) Bart Testa, "To Film a Gospel... and Advent of the Theoretical Stranger" (Patrick Rumble and Bart Testa, eds., Pier Paolo Pasolini: Contemporary Perspectives [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994], 184).

(13.) Illuminations, 78.

(14.) See Benjamin, illuminations, 246-47, n. 11, and Testa, "To Film a Gospel," 195.

(15.) Naomi Greene, Pier Poolo Pasolini: Cinema as Heresy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 121.

(16.) Ibid., 74-75.

(17.) See Greene, Pier Paolo Pasolini, 73. Testa details the stylistic correspondences between film and written gospel in "To Film a Gospel," 187-97.

(18.) "To Film a Gospel," 193.

(19.) Ibid., 182 and passim; see also 197.

(20.) See Testa, "To Film a Gospel," 206, nn. 28, 29; also Benjamin, Illuminations, 226.

(21.) Pasolini, quoted in Testa, "To Film a Gospel," 184.

(22.) Compare the material in Luke 6.

(23.) See Greene, Pier Poolo Pasolini, 76. The film is dedicated to Pope John XXIII, and according to Petri Liukkonen (see "Pier Paolo Pasolini," www.kirjasto.sci.fi/pasolini.htm, 2001), it was partly financed by the Catholic Church.

(24.) See Greene, Pier Paolo Pasolini, 76. However, see also Adele Reinhartz, "Jesus in Film: Hollywood Perspectives on the Jewishness of Jesus" (www.unomaha.edu/~wwwjrf/JesusinFilmRein.htm, 2001).

(25.) Greene, Pier Paolo Pasolini, 77.

(26.) At the time of his death, Pasolini was preparing to make a film titled Saint Paul, which apparently would have been quite different than his Matthew See Friedrich, Pier Paolo Pasolini, 44-45; also Testa, "To Film a Gospel," 198.

(27.) In this respect, the film is curiously similar to Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez's The Blair Witch Project.

(28.) Pier Poolo Pasolini, 21; see also Greene, Pier Paolo Pasolini, 219-20. In his own life, the "Catholic Marxist" Pasolini was perhaps as often in conflict with Italian Marxists as he was with Italian Catholics. See also Testa, "To Film a Gospel," 181.