Jose R
Lush, sexy, entertaining and beautifully shot.
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
11/11/23
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Charles S
Kind of like the book there are endless silly disjointed stories devoid of moral or really anything but shock value, but now with Italian sexploitation. The main characters ham up all their acting to make the stories even goofier which is even more outlandish juxtaposed against the side characters acting pretty naturally on authentic middle eastern sets. You probably won't get bored watching this, but you also won't really come away with anything but tourist spectacle and confusion
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
09/14/23
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Audience Member
Great movie, but it hasn't aged very well
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
01/27/23
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James A
This movie slaps you around the head with what's happening. It's unbelievable... in a really unique and wonderful way. I spent the whole first hour agape.
The settings are like a time capsule. The director has tried to use local people wherever possible. "Filming took place in Isfahan, Iran, the deserts of Eritrea and Yemen as well as in Nepal."
Oh and of course: "The soundtrack was composed by Ennio Morricone."
A
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
08/29/20
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Audience Member
An extraordinary work of art. Visually textured, sensual, and genuinely erotic. The structure of tales intersecting is a thing of wonder.
It is of course possible to make an Orientalist criticism of this film, but it is such a celebratory aesthetic experience that this criticism ends up feeling reductive. Like in the other entries of the Trilogy of Life, this film is also politically conscious in its rejection of modern bourgeois society which even extended to his use of working-class non-actors, and in it's feminism.
This film was shot largely in Yemen, which makes it even more than an artistic achievement — it's also a document of places that no longer exist after being bombed to rubble by the horrific Saudi-led, U.S.-backed war that continues to this day.
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
01/22/23
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Audience Member
"The complete truth is not in one dream, but in several." With this quote that Pasolini, one of the most idiosyncratic of all filmmakers, begins "Il Fiore delle mille e una notte." The strangeness and difficulty of his work Of his commitment to the contradiction: The basis of this commitment was the refusal to abandon the diverse and partly irreconcilable influences that determined the nature of his art: Catholicism, Marxism, homosexuality, urban favelas (scenarios of his early romances ), The peasantry, neo-realism, an attachment to the fantastic and miraculous.
While "Il Fiore delle mille e una notte" seems to be so far removed from the proposals of neo-realism (in an attempt to capture the external and internal realities of the contemporary moment), the director still remains incredibly faithful to neo-realistic aesthetics : The use of non-professional actors, scenes filmed in external and real places (without the interference of artificial scenes or built specifically for the film), and the spontaneity of the game.
Written (with the collaboration of Dacia Maraini) and directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini "Il Fiore delle mille e una notte" (1974), it is the third and final chapter of the "Trilogy of Life" after "Decameron" (1971) and "I racconti di Canterbury" (1972). The greatness of the work of foreigners is noted, with scenes shot in: Yemen, Ethiopia, Iran, India and Nepal, and having a much more complex pre-project during the drafting of the script, undergoing major modifications during the assembly phase. The film was awarded in 1974 at the Cannes Film Festival, having achieved the Grand Prix.
"Il Fiore ..." is based mainly on a story that interacts with others, that is, they are mini stories or episodes, which in the end intertwine in a great fable of a dream world, being the protagonist of this story, the A young couple of lovers, "Nur-ed-Din" (Franco Merli), a cheerful and silly young woman and "Zumurrud" (Ines Pellegrini), a charming and very clever slave. From this couple that marks the initial and main story as a unifying thread, Pasolini tells, six other stories (organized into two groups of three) within a five-part structure.
Each story trio has its own inner themes. The first three (brief anecdotes) are concerned with sexuality and equality, the third (more developed) ending in a tie and the demonstration that female desire and male desire are equally potent. The stories of the second trio are all concerned with the notions of Destiny: two stories in which fate is inescapable and included in a trajectory in which destiny is overcome. In addition, the story of Aziz, Aziza and Badur is in contradiction with the history of the picture of Nureddin and Zumurrud. They are linked by the contradiction that "faithfulness is beautiful, but no more than infidelity." In the tale of Aziz, conflict leads to death and castration, but in the main story, fidelity and infidelity are reconciled: Nureddin, in search of his beloved, can be led to innumerable delightful sexual amusements, but his allegiance to Zumurrud is Always triumphant over them, and finally rewarded in a happy ending that plays (in order to repudiate) sexual power relations.
The recognition and celebration of diversity is an aspect of one of the central movements of Pasolini's work: the effort to rediscover a sense of the wonderful, the magical. Of all the films of Pasolini, "Il Fiore delle mille e una notte" stands out for perceiving the common sense of sexual relations, their pleasure and fun, and promotes this through an eroticism purged of all the contamination of pornography. Relationships that are established with sexual favors or in the end concretized by sex, much more than gratuitous or vulgar, present themselves as something human and common to all, without judgment of values, but for the pleasure of self-satisfaction.
The script, although constructed on a very rigid structure and divided into three acts, each one of which, in its case, divided into four parts, with the strong presence of the structure as an element of connection and homogenization between the stories Chosen by Pasolini and based on the tales "Arabian Nights," in short, the same narrative material is instead presented in the film in a rhapsodic and continuous form. However, we can observe in several moments the remarkable presence of the author (script) and director, transmuted into speeches and defenses redundant to Pasolini, regarding political positioning, his homosexuality and obvious affirmation of faith and heresy.
The work of camera movement is very curious, since Pasolini opted for the use of camera in hand (another clear reference to the neo-realism), which generates an intense movement, almost documentary and that associated with the beautiful photograph of Giuseppe Ruzzolini, Results in a great work and that knows to take advantage of the numerous and beautiful locations, having registered countries that throughout the history have closed by conflicts and wars. Ruzzolini also realizes a vivid photograph that does not differentiate what is reality from a dream, something that we can understand as an assumed position in not defining, giving the viewer freedom to understand everything as a great dream or story, and to make their own separations . Also worthy of mention is the work of Rank Film Labs, with simple special effects and practically handcrafted and that dialogue with the idea of ??a story, of a story of fable, still permeated by criticism and political sense.
Pasolini expresses through the cinema: beauty, love, truth and justice. Pasolini is essential because of its provocative, jocular and impudent nature in going to the bottom of controversial subjects and that society seeks to conceal, so little still, to accompany in a film. "Il Fiore delle mille e una notte" is a dazzle of images that allude to the dream of an imperfect world, but essentially human and therefore susceptible of errors that are assumed in the attempt of correct.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
01/28/23
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