La physiognomonie de l’anxiété dans L’Évangile de Pasolini

Abstract

Pasolini’s idea of Italian popular classes and, in general, the Third World, is very similar to that of the primitivist anthropologists, from the evolutionism of E.B. Tylor (Primitive Culture 1871) to Lucien Lévi-Bruhl (Les Fonctions mentales dans les sociétés inférieures 1910, and L’Âme primitive 1927). These scientists considered history as a linear progression developing through a series of evolutionary stages and founded on the postulate of a well defined border between history and pre-history, civilization and barbarity, city and country, Europe and other continents. Anthropological primitivism had also stressed the need to preserve “endangered” peoples, while casting such people not so much as their contemporaries, but as primitives located in different “presents”. This paper discusses the way in which Pasolini’s cinematographic techniques in The Gospel according to St. Matthew result in casting profound doubt on the linearity and rationality of history. The abundant use of close-ups as well as extreme close-ups contributes to demystify the imagined “truth” of faces: paradoxically, the closer Pasolini’s characters are filmed, the more impenetrable they appear. They express a common sensation of anxiety that becomes an explanation for their faith and at the same time is a powerful element of identification for the spectators.