Pasolini is the only one of my cherished filmmakers who does not have a film in my list of greats, a weird thing. I love how he makes films but the main narrative thrust as carried in the long arch is usually so obvious, so extrovertly Italian, exposing modern absence of purpose in Teorema, human self-delusion here, that it seems like something we always knew. But he is a master of sculpting cinematic air, and this is a truly intelligent work of the medium, and not for any point it makes for sexual freedom or against religion.A few of the individual joys first, because he is so joyous to watch. The faces he finds, such astonishingly expressive Italians. they are not actors in the ordinary sense, they do not mask deeply troubled soul in the coy way of puritans like Bergman. They are human sculptures, each one seemingly handpicked as exuberant fresco of earthy, toothless mirth. His sense of place is naked, unadorned, discovered; unlike so many Merchant Ivory or Hollywood period pieces, I feel like I inhabit this world. His camera, again unadorned, even sloppy at times, but as revelatory as anyone's. In all these he teases the same spontaneous quality, that is what gives his work a certain careless air; but that is being carried by inspiration, instead of fixating on appearance. As honest as it is vital, because it was not excessively tampered with. He does not impose, paint beauty from the outside, it inwardly springs from air, from the flow of tangible emotion in tangible space jolting us into direct experience. Herzog could do it while being magical, few others. The film is a comic-book, an operabuffa in its narrative, but it's not without gravity that is life, nor is this the same as that tired business of 'realism' favored by the unimaginative like Nolan.Where it really soars is in the overall gaze, however pleasant, it is the gaze that elevates this to required viewing for me.All you need to know about the film is that it is in the form of thematically linked stories, centered in medieval Naples with rascals and scoundrels caught in mischief, often sexual. It is both funny and poignant, a film made for the same rowdy people it depicts. As said, the deeper purpose of the work is so readily available, show the marvelously flawed human being in all its buffonery and self- delusion, we may be inclined to think it 'small'. I think the problem is largely ours, myself included—we often mistake complexity for intelligence, reason with words instead of seeing the formative fabric.So this isn't complicated in what it says, but it is some of the most intelligent stuff I have seen.Look at the film again. In each story someone is being deceived, as are we watching a film. In each story, as in the overall film, the lie or deception reveals a more penetrating truth about self. Various selves pursue truth (linked to freedom from the norm), sometimes against the restraints of the story, sometimes killed by the story, sometimes negotiated to be a part of the story. So the easiest thing to do, what many crass minds would do, is to emphasize the strongest emotion, despair in one story, hypocrisy in another, and pull on that to draw audience reactions. We'd still have pretty much the same point, human buffoonery.It's all in Pasolini's multifaceted expression; in the first story with Andreuccio who came to buy horses, the poignant, ascetic lesson of 'thank god for losing your money' is uttered by two sneaky louts, so registers as both guidance and deception; in the story with the fake deaf-mute boy in the convent, the head nun deludes herself with the nonsensical miracle but simply oozes sexual joy as she rushes to ring the bell; in the story with two young lovers discovered the morning after sex by the parents of the girl, there is obvious hypocrisy by the father but everyone in the end happily gets his heart's desire; in the story with the illicit Sicilian boyfriend, we have both a sense of genuine bonding in the grove among the boys and awareness of its duplicity.The apotheosis, the most emblematic instance, is perhaps the cuckold potter; we get once more both the obvious duplicity, being cheated on, but also the ecstatic, enigmatic laughter of the divine fool who is each of us.See, Pasolini could point out social wrongs, or just plain stupidity, as well as Godard, but he could not afford to be a sweeping fool. Remember, he was a communist expelled from the Party in his youth because of his homosexuality—the best thing that could happen to him as an artist.What he does here is the same, a truly gentle soul. He sketches very simple desires, then bit by bit he challenges the simplicity of our logical leaps in dealing with them, leaps over unfathomable soul. The nun's miracle is nonsensical, but that is her way of coping with newfound joy. Who's to condemn her? Who, not being able to see her ecstasy, would be so dumb as to point out the fallacy of the miracle?This is real intelligence folks, the foundation of it. Seeing through the illusion to the self that gives rise to it, this being real freedom from the norm.

This is the first of Pasolini's three feature-film adaptations of obscene tales of antiquity, the other two being "The Canterbury Tales" and "The Arabian Nights." It contains ten of Boccaccio's most famous tales… The bawdiest story concerns a merchant who back-doors his partner's wife by promising to tell her his secret of turning a woman to a female horse and back to a woman again...The tale of the two lovers sleeping together on the terrace is quite nice and very erotic, but the most hilarious one involves a young man who pretends he's a deaf mute in order to get into a convent... Once inside, he discovers that the sisters are very curious about all the excitement the world has made over sex and want to find out if it is worth it...The stories are quite funny and the acting is adequate especially for non-professionals… But the film's charm is in its unrefined energy…It spends as much time showing nude men as it does showing nude women, which was quite unusual for its time

The tragedy is that this piece of rubbish was part of my curriculum while I was studying cinema. So imagine how I was forced to watch it in complete. Believe me going through hell is much much easier. Our professor told us that this is some film ???, but he never thought that we'd disagree or assume the apposite. I don't think that there is any gods on earth, we're only humans, so all the filmmakers, therefore they CAN make mistakes, bad movies.. Or very bad too. The main problem wasn't that art, by all means, is susceptible to endless points of view, but that a lot of people just don't get it, that every single human got his own genuine taste, his own opinion, hence what I suppose it the greatest movie ever made, can also be your worst one ever, and how that is right both ways, but how many people can understand this correctly?. So my professor believes in this movie, and simply I don't. However, the only way to evaluate this "thing" is by measuring it by its original intent to show us different kinds of old folk stories or whatever to catch on this society's mentality, imagination, and nature. To tell you the truth, Mr. Pier Paolo Pasolini as the scriptwriter and the director made it too unbearable to watch in the first place. The movie is so UGLY. I can't stand this, so how about analyzing it, then discovering the potential beauty in it !! It's beyond your mind hideousness, and strangely not for the sake of the movie's case or anything, it's for the sake of the unstable vision of Pasolini. His work is so primitive to underdeveloped extent. The deadly cinematic technique, the effective sense of silliness, and the incredible horribleness made everything obnoxious. Look at the atrocious acting, the unfruitful cinematography, the awfully poor sets, .. OH MY GOD I've got the nausea already. It can terminate your objectivity violently as watching this movie is one true pain like taking the wisdom tooth off by a blind doctor. There are dreadful nightmares which could be more merciful than this. So originally, how to continue THAT just to review it fairly ? Actually, you don't. As this very movie doesn't treat you fair at all. There is really memorable scene in here where some boys are peeing into the eye of the camera (!) I'm trying to connect some things like that with Pasolini's end as murdered.

The Paradise is only joy. An space without masks and rumors, trips and hypocrisy. A slice of this land is "Decameron". The search of beauty and sense of life are the ingredients of a way to see the reality like an old game with new rules. Like Jacob, Pier Paolo Pasolini have his own fight. The truth for director is part of Greek kalokagathia. The trips of characters, theirs tales, they innocents sins are facts of a exterior reality and forms of the first desire. The role of director is significant for his illusion about life and art. For him, the way to Heaven's Garden is open, yet. The way,only, is not correct and the expectations are fakes. The Bocaccio's novel and this film are not the fruits of same tree. The message is the character of Pasolini. Why an disciple of Giotto? Because the painter, like his pictures in Asissi church, represent the beginning. Why "Il Decameron"? Because the way to himself is always an great adventure.