Recently watched: The Grim Reaper (1962). Original title: La commare secca.
“You’ll die covered in lice!” Seriously – Italians have the best insults! A vivid slice of life in the gutter adapted from a short story by highly politicized low life poet/provocateur Pier Paolo Pasolini, The Grim Reaper (21-year-old Bernardo Bertolucci’s directorial debut) opens with the discovery of a murdered prostitute in the park alongside The Tiber. The ensuing film unfolds in flashbacks, as the potential culprits recount their versions of what happened that night while being interrogated by the cops. Meanwhile, Bertolucci repeatedly cuts back to the doomed sex worker (starkly unglamorous and middle-aged with a careworn face) getting ready for work in her flat, drinking espresso, pinning-up her hair, oblivious that she has a date with death.
Out of all the mid-twentieth century Italian art cinema directors, Bertolucci is the one I’m least au fait with. The Grim Reaper is firmly in the gritty tradition of Pasolini’s early masterworks Accattone (1961) and Mamma Roma (1962), Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria (1957) and Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers (1960). In fact, it offers an irresistible cornucopia of all my favorite Italian neo-realist leitmotifs! Raw egg-sucking. Prostitution (everyone is seemingly either a pimp or on the game themselves. The tough hetero-flexible Italian boys depicted here are seemingly open to turning tricks, if only to rob the johns of their gold watches). Petty crime. Rough trade in tight pants. Italian men sexually harassing girls on the street. Women with ratted hair and heavy black liquid eyeliner. Nuns. The Colosseum. Women wearing Anna Magnani-style black slips. Grubby urchins playing in the street. Hungry characters speaking wistfully of potatoes in meat sauce and gnocchi. Ads for Campari and Cinzano everywhere.
This isn’t a spoiler, but the conclusion offers a bleakly pessimistic assessment of mankind. “She was only a whore!” the killer shouts in protest when he’s finally apprehended.
Note! Don't confuse this film with this one!
