Totò and his son Ninetto are drifting on a road in Italy when they meet a speaking crow.
EN
“In Uccellacci e uccellini I think the new element was that I tried to make it more cinema - there are almost no references to the figurative arts, and many more explicit references to other films. Uccellacci e uccellini is the product of a cinematographic rather than a figurative culture, unlike Accattone. It is about the end of neo-realism as a kind of limbo, and it evokes the ghost of neo-realism, particularly the beginning about two characters living out their life without thinking about it – i.e. two typical heroes of neo-realism, humble, humdrum and unaware.”
Pier Paolo Pasolini1
“Uccellacci e uccellini sits between two phases of Pasolini’s cinema, and in a way, its scope is, amongst other things, to narrate that passage. It is a film/essay about Italy in the mid Sixties, but it also a sort of diary page where Pasolini reasons about his work as an artist and an intellectual. In order to keep some lightness in his narration and to grasp the viewers’ attention, Pasolini chose the narrative genre of the fable, a fundamentally moralistic genre that was well suited for his ideological intent. The fable genre is only apparently far from Pasolini’s sensibility. Together with La terra vista dalla luna and Che cosa sono le nuvole?, Uccellacci e uccellini constitutes a fantastic intermezzo, a sort of pause for the director, in which he abandons himself to a playful whim.”
Alessandro Valenzisi2
