The Decameron

R

Released Dec 12, 1971

1h 47m

Comedy

Drama

LGBTQ+

List

79%

Tomatometer

14 Reviews

75%

Audience Score

2,500+ Ratings

A series of stories revolves around an aspiring painter (Franco Citti), nuns, a gardener, a priest and a husband.

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Penelope Houston

Times (UK)

In effect, The Decameron does come across somewhat distantly, for all its busy emphasis on the spontaneous energies of a genial Utopia which has yet to discover the fretful complexities of Renaissance man.

Jul 8, 2020

Full Review

Time Out

The sight of the endless assembly of seemingly toothless proles Pasolini picked up as extras can be a bit intimidating.

Jan 26, 2006

Full Review

Vincent Canby

New York Times

Marvelous.

Rated: 4.5/5

May 9, 2005

Full Review

Robert Dunbar

Philadelphia Gay News

The Decameron manages to be filthy-looking and is probably the most accurate vision of peasant life during the Renaissance period ever committed to film.

May 28, 2020

Full Review

James Kendrick

Q Network Film Desk

at times it achieves nearly sublime heights (or, more accurately, lows) of grubby humor and vitality, but at other times it feels strained and slapdash

Rated: 2.5/4

Jan 4, 2013

Full Review

Andrew L. Urban

Urban Cinefile

Those with gentle sensibilities and who regard nuns as sacred should avoid this film.

Jun 5, 2009

Full Review

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jordan m

It's a lot harder to review this movie when I'm doing it having watched Pasolini's entire Trilogy of Life, mostly because this one was actually quite good. The trilogy as a whole suffers massively from diminishing returns and the feeling that Pasolini's creativity was waning while his desire to exploit non-actors willing to debase themselves with extensive, non-artistic nudity was waxing. Perhaps the Decameron was better source material than the other two books he adapted, but I doubt it made much difference here. I found Pasolini to be similar to Lars von Trier in that there are people who squint so hard at his work that they see art and nuance and metaphor galore, whereas I mostly see them as spoiled manchildren who have never experienced proportionate consequences for their actions, who push the boundaries of decency solely to dare the world to ostracize them for it. I'm getting ahead of myself though. This was a pretty good movie; the trilogy doesn't really get awful until about halfway through the second movie.

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

03/31/23

Full Review

Audience Member

This is a film that reminds you what is special about cinema. Although based on a literary text, it is using the unique language of cinema to make something utterly unique. This film condenses abstract ideas about sex, religion, and art into something ecstatic and full of joy. A masterpiece.

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

01/22/23

Full Review

Audience Member

In his insightful short essay on Pasolini's sensuous adaptation of the 14th-Century Tuscan classic, Colin MacCabe suggests that, for all the supposed literary pretension of its source material, central to the film is a shockingly mundane and unglamorous depiction of corporeality, particularly in all the browned, broken, and toothless smiles. By casting (not even amateur) non-actors with faces prima facie unacceptable by Hollywood standards and recasting Boccaccio's text in the Neapolitan dialect (as vulgar to the ears of wealthy Northern Italians today as the original Florentine was to Latinate audiences), Pasolini foregrounds the worldliness of his subject, fashioning a film that forgoes intellectual aspirations of most literary adaptations, instead favoring the experiences and entertainment of everyday working-class people, who make up both his cast and his audience. For a true Marxist like Pasolini, the poetic and the proletariat are not in opposition, but function here to complement one another through a celebration of real bodies "shorn of all the civilizing processes of the Renaissance," as MacCabe puts it, bodies unadorned, unconcealed, and unvarnished. If anything, this flagrant (and no doubt fragrant and flatulent) rendering of physical existence makes for a film truer to the ribald spirit of l'Umana Commedia than a more bookish and cultured adaptation that we might expect that sticks to the letter of the text, aiming as it does not just to bring Boccaccio's world to life, but bring new and sweaty life to the bourgeois world of staid academics Pasolini so rightly despised.

Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars

01/30/23

Full Review

júlio a

Eu preciso re-ver para absorver tudo!

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

03/31/23

Full Review

Audience Member

Episodic and appropriately bawdy; one of Pasolini's best.

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

02/27/23

Full Review

Audience Member

i found this episodic film interesting and fascinating enough to keep me watching until the end, but I probably wouldn't watch a second time around.

Rated 2 out of 5 stars

02/27/23

Full Review

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Pier Paolo Pasolini

Director

Franco Citti

Ciappelletto

Ninetto Davoli

Andreuccio of Perugia

Angela Luce

Peronella

Pier Paolo Pasolini

Allievo di Giotto

Silvana Mangano

The Madonna

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Synopsis

A series of stories revolves around an aspiring painter (Franco Citti), nuns, a gardener, a priest and a husband.

Director: Pier Paolo Pasolini
Screenwriter: Pier Paolo Pasolini
Production Co: Artemis Film
Rating: R
Genre: Comedy, Drama, LGBTQ+
Original Language: Italian
Release Date (Theaters): Dec 12, 1971, Limited
Runtime: 1h 47m

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