The Hawks and the Sparrows

Uccellacci e uccellini; fantasy / comedy / road movie, Italy, 1966; D: Pier Paolo Pasolini, S: Totò, Ninetto Davioli, Femi Benussi, Rossana Di Rocco, Renato Capogna
Totò and his clumsy son Ninetto are walking on a road. They come to a restaurant where Ninetto joins a few guys dancing outside. Totò spots a crowd of curious people observing a house where a murder happened, while Ninetto talks with a girl dressed as an angel. They continue their journey and meet a talking crow. The Crow starts following them and tells a fable: in the story Toto and Ninetto are two monks who were given a special assignment by St. Francis of Assisi to convert hawks and sparrows to Christianity. They succeed, but the hawks attack the sparrows. Back to the real world, Toto and Ninetto continue their journey and go to collect a debt in a poor house. When the Crow starts asking further philosophical questions, the two of them get annoyed and eat it.

"The Hawks and the Sparrows" are probably the best film Pier Paolo Pasolini ever made, a fable so weird and so strange that it is even unusual for the weird and strange work of the eccentric filmmaker. This shining movie addresses some serious issues about futile ideologies, the purpose of life and the unnoticed intelligence, but the whole tone of the film is so funny and so indestructibly hilarious at times that it seems as if Pasolini was making a cheerful light comedy, with the help of unusual camera angles, dialogues, quirky situations or the directing treatment. From the opening shot of the Moon, in which a Narrator is singing the opening credits (!), it is obvious that this isn't a usual film, and when Toto and his son Ninetto show up walking and talking about her mother's false teeth that she is hiding from grandpa, the humorous touch establishes itself and does not defer. Another funny moment is when the Crow intoduces its address ("My country is called ideology, I live in the capital, the city of the future"), causing Toto and Ninetto to give a similar reply ("We live in Number 23." - "Below Cesspool Ridge." - "World famous for martyrdom of St. Illiterate!"). Toto and Ninetto are symbols for two average people ignorant of the world, walking on a long road of life without a goal or an end, while the talking crow represents a left-wing intellectual who tries to "awaken" them and raise their level of awareness, but gets ignored. 

The whole story is one gigantic, dreamy, Felliniesque fable about the urge for communication with the different opinions, and considering Pasolini is a devoted Marxist it is not surprising if there are some subliminal messages about it. There is this unusual 30-minute subplot in which Toto and Ninetto are playing monks trying to convert sparrows to Christianity, and in a hilarious sequence, in order to communicate with them, they start jumping up and down mimicking sparrows, while the birds are shown walking on a building, all the while the subtitles are showing their imaginary dialogues. It may be an allegory of Marxism trying to reconcile the poor and the rich class, the small and the big, but to no avail, as the nature cannot be changed—as well as an inversion of the main story where the Crow tries to convert Toto and Ninetto, but without success. Other episodes, back in the "main" story, are also a meditation on some issues in life—in one episode, Toto and Ninetto defecate on a farm, so a woman starts shooting at them from the rooftop (wars over territorial disputes); Toto and Ninetto trying to collect a debt from a mother in an old house (debtor's prison); the encounter with a group of traveling players, consisting out of a crippled man, a pregnant woman, an African man, and a gay man (the people living on the margins). Despite all of these encounters, and the Crow's comments, Toto and Ninetto do not learn anything, don't change, and don't turn away from their pointless journey, where they just go on and on in circles. In this film Pasolini succeeded in showing the deepest, most serious and contemplative messages in the most innocent, childish and funny way, an ability only few can accomplish. Even if the viewers don't get the story, they will certainly get the jokes, which means that this is one of those rare 1 % of "fool-proof" movies in the cinema that work whatever way you look at them.

Grade:++++