Janina Schupp, Spaces of Exclusion
SPACES OF EXCLUSION The Expressive Cinematic Space of Pasolini’s Rome in Accattone and Mamma Roma Janina Schupp University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom
Abstract This paper examines how Pasolini’s reworking of the real city of Rome through cinematic style results in the generation of an expressive cinematic space that reflects the social and geographical exclusion of Rome’s lumpenproletariat and periphery. Focusing on Pasolini’s films Accattone (1961) and Mamma Roma (1962), this paper breaks down the cinematic image into urban narrative layers to analyse how – from the people Pasolini chooses, to the (sub)urban environment and buildings he frames – each fragment of the real city is carefully reworked through stylistic techniques to gain an expressive layer. Pasolini addresses Rome’s periphery of mass housing projects and provisional tenements – the “borgate” – and idealises pimps, prostitutes and thieves as critical symbols set against a society that excludes them. He consequently epitomises the borgate’s vulnerability and powerlessness in the face of social, cultural and geographical changes that occurred in Rome in the 1960s. While Accattone constructs an allegorical space of distances and marginality, Mamma Roma reveals the failed integration and oppression of the city’s underclass through mass housing projects. This paper contributes to the multidisciplinary debate on the city in cinema, by analysing how Pasolini’s use of cinematic style generates an expressive cinematic space out of the city’s real components.
Keywords: Pasolini, cinematic space, exclusion, Rome
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