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Decameron

AKA: Il Decameron
Le Decameron

(1971)

A Nunsploitation.Net review

In the 1970s, three enormously successful films were made giving rise to a horde of imitators hoping to ride the coattails of their success. These three films and the copycats that followed created a Golden Age of nunsploitation. One of these three films was Pier Paolo Pasolini's Decameron.

The Decameron itself is based on the 14th century literary work of the same name written by Giovanni Boccaccio. The original Decameron was a collection of irreverant, raunchy and generally humorous short stories. While many of the stories were likely original inventions of the author, they were products of their time and were probably derived from popular oral tradition, jokes and rumors of the day.

The tales are telling in the sense that they show the public at large had an insatiable curiosity about life inside the cloister and an even greater imagination as to what exactly could be going on behind convent walls. How little times have changed!

Pasolini's Decameron adapts nine short stories none of which are really connected to any of the others. First-time viewers may be a bit confused by the lack of transitions. As each story ends, a new one immediately begins. The story of Giotto, the painter (played by Pasolini himself), is intertwined with some of the later segments.

Of primary interest to nunsploitation fans is the tale of "Massetto and the Nuns", a classic nunsploitation tale of old! In the story, Massetto pretends to be a deaf mute offering work for food. The nuns take pity on him and hire him on to be the convent gardener. Some of the nuns get the idea that they can enjoy sex with him without the risk of anyone ever finding out since he is mute. The idea catches on and soon every nun except the Mother Superior is having a go at him.

Poor Massetto, having fornicated to the point of exhaustion, collapses in the garden and steals a quick nap. He is quickly discovered by the Mother Superior who can't help but admire his masculine physique, especially the great bulge in his crotch. (In Boccaccio's book, the wind had blown up his shirt, exposing his genitalia completely).

The Mother Superior immediately demands that he satisfy her as well. Poor Massetto tries, but is too exhausted to complete the deed. He stands up and says "I have heard that one cock can satisfy ten hens, but that ten men can scarcely satisfy one woman. I have to satisfy nine women, and cannot keep going much longer."

The Mother Superior attributed Massetto's ability to speak to a miracle of divine intervention. All of the town's people believe he is a saint and he is allowed to stay on at the convent as steward. In Boccaccio's story, his "duties" are divided up among the nuns in such a way that he can handle them. Boccaccio writes, "In the said labors, he begot a large quantitty of little nuns, but things were so carefully concealed that nothing was known about them."

The movie version is crafted well. Especially funny is the scene of all the nuns lined up outside their doors, waiting patiently for their turn with Massetto.

The other eight tales range from cleverly humorous to poignantly tragic. Especially heartbreaking is the tale of Elisabetta who's lover, a low-ranking servant, is killed by her brothers because his inferior social stature does not allow for an acceptable marriage to their sister.

One of the final tales is that of a lecherous priest who off-handedly remarks that he can turn his mare into a woman to keep him company at night. The impoverished couple he tells believes him and asks him to teach him the trick. He takes advantage of their ignorance for a chance to pork the gullible wife. "The most difficult part is pinning on the tail," he says.

The one all-encompassing theme of Pasolini's Decameron is hypocrisy. Priests are not pious. Nuns are not chaste. However, unlike other movies of the genre it's not just hypocrisy in the Church that Pasolini targets, it's hypocrisy everywhere in every one. Upstanding "pillars of the community" like Elisabetta's brothers are not upstanding at all. Compare her plight with that of a subsequent story in which a girl is happily forced to marry her lover simply because their roles are reversed — he is the rich one and she the low-ranking one. In one case, it's a death sentence. In another it's a blessing. It has nothing to do with family honor and everything to do with money.

Pasolini's film is chock full of nudity. Not just a little bit of nudity here or there like you might see on late-night TV. We're talking full frontal nudity, both male and female. The only thing it's missing are the penetration shots. Yet, despite the abundance of nakedness and sexual promiscuity, the film is respected enough as a work of art that you will find it sitting nonchalantly on store shelves, carried without mention or complaint by most vendors.

The nudity, while frequent, does serve a purpose in each of the stories. Boccaccio's tales are irreverent and written to cater to the common folk of his time. The movie was enormously successful and imitators were quick to exploit the combination of nudity, sex and anti-clerical themes to create many nunsploitation candidates.

Some of these copycats include Decameroticus, Decameron II: Boccaccio's Other Tale, and Storie Scellerate. Some were based on the works of Boccaccio or Geoffrey Chaucer, but many were merely "Decameron-esque" — newly created stories in the same vein as Decameron.

The DVD available from MGM/UA is shamefully bare bones offering absolutely nothing in the way of special features. With a work as rich as Decameron with a long literary history, you would expect at least some features about the significance of the book, the movie and the creators. Both Giovanni Boccaccio and Pier Paolo Pasolini are respected and prolific artists in each of their fields. There is a wealth of information that would fuel a featurette.

Being an unintentional pioneer of the genre, Decameron, like Ken Russell's The Devils, is of a different stock than the copycats that followed. It offers nunsploitation fans a fuller experience that is quite different from anything else in the genre.

The movie has great artistic merit. Pasolini concentrates on the faces of his actors, allowing the camera to focus on them for long periods of time. He mixes professional actors with amateurs culled from the local township. This gives the cast a realistic feel. These are real people. Not airbrushed supermodels on diets of lettuce and cottage cheese with anachronistically perfect, white teeth. They have real plights and real emotions.

The few superstars he does feature are perfectly cast. Silvana Mangano (whom nunsploitation fans may recognize from Anna) is nothing short of perfect in Giotto's dream of the Madonna. Her time on screen is brief, but powerful.

Overall, Decameron is a delightful film. It is fun and lighthearted with biting criticism on social hypocrisy. The stories are delivered in fast bites in much the same way Quentin Tarantino delivers his films today. As such, it deviates from the traditional long narrative of movies. Decameron is not for everyone, but try it. Odds are you'll enjoy it.

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