New York's MoMa is currently celebrating Pier Paolo Pasolini with a cinematic retrospective organised in collaboration with the Cineteca di Bologna that started in December and will end in January 2013. The retrospective is completed by a series of events, discussions, installations and an exhibition of Pasolini’s paintings and drawings.
Some of the films included in the programme are recently restored versions of the movies, others are presented in newly struck prints and the retrospective includes masterpieces such as Accattone (1961), Mamma Roma (1962) and The Gospel According to Matthew (1964).
There is a wonderfully intense connection between Pier Paolo Pasolini and topics such as architecture (think about the camera lingering on the details of a building or showing us landscapes from a distance) or fashion.
Some of these links were explored in previous posts analysing Capucci's work in Teorema (1968) or the elaborate costumes in Medea (1969), the result of an intense and experimental collaboration between Umberto Tirelli's tailoring house and Piero Tosi's design skills.
Besides, each film from "The Trilogy of Life" - The Decameron, The Canterbury Tales, and Arabian Nights - is an orgy of fantastic costumes made at times with rigid felt, at others with soft velvets and even the raw and disconcerting Salò or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975) can be explored from a fashion point of view.
Today, rather than analysing an entire film also to avoid helping clueless journalists working for trend agencies to steal ideas and content (I know who you are and I really think it's time for you to start doing your own research...), I would like to take as example of crasftmanship just one specific costume from Edipo Re (Oedipus Rex, 1967).
The most interesting thing about Pasolini's mythological films was the fact that, right because the theme of the film did not imply any precise historical reference, costume designers and tailoring houses were able to play with the characters and find new and unusual solutions.
To recreate his personal vision of the Sophoclean myth, Pasolini turned to Danilo Donati (better known maybe as Fellini's costume designer) and to the Farani tailoring house.
The costume designer and the tailoring house involved didn't buy any fabrics to make the costumes for this film, fabrics were indeed made from scratch using a handmade wood loom secured at the corners with screws and with nails close together across the top and bottom of the structure.
Rather than using wool, Farani opted for waste canvas and for cotton-based materials commonly used to create padded areas in a garment. These materials were cut into strips and then woven on the wood loom with a safety pin.
Jocasta's entire wardrobe was made employing this technique, as you can see from this hand-dyed bright blue strapless costume matched with a cloak that sensually covers only one shoulder of the character. The cloak also appears as a symbol of incest as the camera lingers on it while Oedipus and Jocasta make love.
I don't want to spoil the rest of the film by focusing on other details (the jewellery pieces and the secrets behind them would maybe need another post...), so just go and see the movie if you're in New York, obviously paying attention to the costumesand the accessories and trying to guess which materials were employed to make them.
Oedipus Rex by Pier Paolo Pasolini, Theater 1, T1, MoMa, New York, 2nd January 2013, 4.30 p.m.
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Posted by: Dinosaur Costume | January 10, 2013 at 02:58 PM