Love Meetings

Pier Paolo Pasolini’s rarely seen four-part documentary about sex in Italy really is an historical document.

Early in the 1960s a film from France created a remarkable buzz. That film was Chronique d’un été made by Jean Rouch with the sociologist Edgar Morin. It featured interviews with ordinary people in Paris in an attempt to capture the tone and outlook of the moment. Whatever earlier cinematic influences may have contributed to it, this documentary with its observational approach had everyone talking about it: cinéma- vérité was a hot subject. When in 1964 the Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini filmed Love Meetings he saw it as being the first time that a film of this type had been made in Italy. The methods adopted for this work, one which has rarely been screened outside of Italy, do indeed make it something of a companion piece to Chronique d’un été.  Nevertheless, Italian Cinema had in fact already echoed that work to some extent in Ugo Gregoretti’s survey of Italian youth in 1962’s I nuovo angeli, albeit that his film did in part involve actors.

Love Meetings seeks to capture something of life and attitudes not just in one city but across a country: it finds Pasolini as an on-screen interviewer travelling around Italy (Milan, Bologna, Palermo and Calabria are among the places visited). At intervals we find him in conversation with the author Alberto Moravia and the psychoanalyst Cesare Musatti discussing the value and limitations of his film. They recognise that the middle classes choose to be silent and therefore largely avoid participation and that those who do comment may be evasive or even tell lies. This is particularly likely when – as is often the case here – the questions asked relate to sex.

Indeed, the film starts with young boys being asked what they know about how babies are born but, even if some of the children do know, most hide their awareness and even talk of the stork bringing them. Adolescents express different views when it comes to the extent to which sexual freedoms had increased at that time but, despite such variations, Love Meetings has become a veritable time capsule. In 1964 divorce was illegal, many regarded marriage as being for life regardless of domestic abuse and, when a law was passed closing brothels, it was applauded by some and criticised by others. As for how women were seen, one interviewee may have thought that he was being liberal in believing that they were a little inferior to men but not with a large gap.

Without revealing his own sexuality, Pasolini enquires into views on homosexuality and finds that gay men are widely regarded as disgusting. However, one of the conversation sequences offers relevant analysis: it suggests that difference was seen as threatening and that on a broader basis the insecurity of the masses was a major factor in encouraging conformity. Love Meetings is certainly not a major work, but it's a lively one. It may not always draw firm conclusions or be especially revealing, but it does bring out clearly the contrasting attitudes of North and South and the extent to which rural areas remained the most traditional in outlook. What is consistent throughout this film is the wonderfully vivid quality of the black-and-white photography shared by the largely forgotten Mario Bernardo and the great Tonino Delli Colli.

Original title: Comizi d’amore.

Note: This film is available on Mubi as part of a celebration of the centenary of the birth of Pier Paolo Pasolini.

MANSEL STIMPSON

Featuring: Pier Paolo Pasolini, Alberto Moravia, Cesare Musatti, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Antonella Lualdi, Peppino Di Capri, Camilla Cederna, Oriana Fallaci, Adele Cambria, and Lello Bersani as narrator.

Dir Pier Paolo Pasolini, Pro Alfredo Bini, Ph Mario Bernardo and Tonino Delli Colli, Ed Nino Baragli.

Arco Film-Mubi.
92 mins. Italy. 1964. UK Rel: 22 March 2022. No Cert.