Welcome back friends, readers, and lovers of cinema! We’re continuing our summer theme with two films by Sergio Citti: Ostia (1970) and Casotto AKA Beach House (1977). If you didn’t already know, Sergio is the big bro to Franco Citti, the star of many Pasolini movies, as well as both films featured here. And Sergio himself was one of Pasolini’s main pals, and is credited as a co-writer on Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom and Accattone. The man has been involved with some hits! Here’s the TL;DR:
The Quick Gist
Ostia is a drama written by Pier Paolo Pasolini, about two brothers, thieves and self-proclaimed anarchists, who become unlikely friends with a traumatized young woman.
Beach House is an Italian sex comedy that takes place in a beachside changing room with a rotating cast of over-the-top characters.
Beach House (1977)
I’ll start off with the more frivolous of the two. Beach House is a seaside sex comedy that unfolds like a horned-up chamber play. 95% of the film takes place within a small changing cabin on the beach, where a variety of comical characters (most of them horny as hell) rotate in and out. Among these sex crazed freaks are a pair of prostitutes who just can’t seem to get their john to sleep with them, two self-obsessed soldiers (one who resorts to stuffing his speedo to keep his tiny little secret from his friend), a couple who keep getting thwarted every time they try to consummate their lust, and two gas station attendants who can’t catch a break. Oh, and a priest with two penises for two times the abstinence.
Like any good sex comedy, there’s plenty of nudity — full frontal for everyone! It doesn’t take itself seriously at all, primarily interested in skin, sin, and laughs. And kind of surprisingly, there’s a pretty solid cast. Among the stars is Franco Citti (Accattone), Mariangela Melato (Love and Anarchy, Swept Away), Catherine Deneuve in a brief cameo, and strangest of all, a young Jodie Foster, just a year after her role in Taxi Driver. More bizarre than anything that happens in the film is seeing a 15 year old Foster in an Italian sex comedy sharing the stage with a bunch of Pasolini and Lina Wertmüller regulars. And her story may be the most controversial of the bunch. She’s a few months pregnant, but obviously not married, and they don’t know the who the father is. So her grandparents try desperately to get her shacked up with her cousin (Michele Placido of the infamous La Orca). Okay, he’s her third cousin. I guess that makes a difference. They must preserve the family name at all costs.
It’s a huge farce, and really not terrible, especially if these type of Italian sex comedies are your thing. It’s a silly movie, and especially worth it if you’re a fan of any of those popular names.
Ostia (1970)
Now on the other side of the spectrum is Ostia, which is totally different in tone than Beach House. A drama written by Pier Paolo Pasolini, the film is about two brothers, Rabbino and Bandiera; thieves and self-proclaimed anarchists who have been shaped by equal parts Christianity and leftist socialist ideals. As one character in the film alludes to, Jesus was a socialist, after all.
When a mysterious woman is found lying unconscious in a field, the brothers and their criminal friends bring her to their home to “save her.” Which turns out to be the exact opposite of what they do. Rather than help the poor woman, the brothers wait downstairs while their friends assault her. Rabbino and Bandiera seem upset at what is going on, but rather than stop it, they get drunk on wine.
Their cohorts leave, and the brothers are left with Monica. What follows is an unlikely friendship between Rabbino (once again played by Franco Citti), Bandiera, and Monica. We wonder if her presence will cause a rift between the two. And at first, it surprisingly doesn’t. They spend time together, share stories about their traumatic pasts, and take trips to Ostia (the seaside town just outside of Rome where Pasolini would be brutally murdered five years after the release of the film).
But when the brothers are sent to jail for stealing, a crack in their relationship begins to form. Maybe things aren’t as hunky dory as we initially thought.
There’s a strong religious undertone in the film, a thematic staple for Pasolini. But unlike his films, Ostia feels a bit more stylized. Sergio Citti revels in light and shadow and has a keen eye for well-framed and beautiful images. Not that Pasolini doesn’t. But here, it just feels more crisp and formal.
I don’t know exactly what I was expecting from this film. Even with Pasolini involved, I didn’t think I’d enjoy it as much as I did, especially as I watched Beach House first. I anticipated a much lighter, inconsequential comedy. But Ostia was a surprising film. One with some weight, and one that should be considered alongside other Pasolini works. I’m surprised it isn’t, as there is a lot of overlap.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy your summer with Sergio as much as I did. Go on and debase yourself with Beach House and dip your toes in the drama of Ostia. Come on in, the water’s fine!
Password to watch on the site: summerwithserge
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Want to chat about the movie with fellow film freaks? Then check out the Discord!
Supplements:
This summer I read Pasolini’s first novel Ragazzi di Vita AKA The Street Kids. A book that influenced his first film Accattone, and which you can see bits of in Ostia. It’s about a group of disenfranchised kids living in the slums of Rome.
I’m now also reading his second book, Una Vita Violenta AKA A Violent Life, in the similar vein as his previous novel. This book is dedicated to Sergio Citti, the man of the hour. He also has a writing credit on the film adaptation. Both books also take place in summer.
The DL links will be up for a week: The Street Kids | A Violent Life
Okay, I know I’ve kept you long enough. If you want to go, you can go. But if you want to read more on Ostia, I couldn’t help but to engage with some of the themes and ideas in that film. There will inevitably be some major spoilers so I’ve kept tacked it onto the bottom. Feel free to read or come back after you’ve seen the movie. Enjoy!
A Deeper Dive Into Ostia
Ostia, seen through a religious lens, is a classic Cain and Abel story. There’s an interesting interpretation of this story from the book Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism that states:
[The myth of Cain and Abel] shows us how brothers can become mortal enemies through the very fact that they worship the same God in the same way… It is not the difference in dogma nor that of cult or ritual which is the cause, but uniquely the pretension to equality or, if one prefers, the negation of hierarchy.
Rabbino and Bandiera were raised as bourgeois hating, government despising, good ol’ anarchists. They are equals, totally opposed to hierarchies. So much so, that they even killed their father when they were young. But when Rabbino and Bandiera both fall in love with Monica, it is not ideology or a difference in opinion that destroys their bond, but the fact they both worship her. They both lust after her. And they can’t be equal in this. Only one can have her.
With this in mind, Monica symbolizes both their god and their temptation. But by all accounts, the brothers are celibate. When they first meet Monica, they don’t seem to lust after her like the other criminals. In fact, they seem to be sexually repressed, struggling with their masculinity, and possibly even some homosexuality. Not to mention their instance of incest, which is brought up by Rabbino when he reminds his brother of the time they fooled around, a moment that Bandiera seems to have repressed. But Monica has unlocked something dangerous in them, and it’s festering.
While the brothers are in jail, they are sent to a priest to confess. There is an important exchange that happens between Rabbino and the priest:
Rabbino: Does the devil still exist?
Priest: Of course.
Rabbino: And how does he present himself? In what form?
Priest: In any form that tempts you.
If it isn’t clear enough at this point that this is referring to Monica, we only need to consider a previous scene. Monica and the two brothers are at the beach. They take a swim, night falls, and they proceed to build a bonfire. Monica undresses in front of the fire to warm up, the flames seemingly engulfing her. She stands nude between the two brothers, who are on their knees as they keep the fire burning. Monica — their god, their temptation — has finally separated them.
It’s immediately after this scene that the brothers are sent to prison. While locked up, Monica claims to the court that she lives with one of the brothers so she’s given access to visit them. But she’s only able to name one, and she chooses Bandiera, which of course upsets Rabbino. It’s what ultimately seals Bandiera’s fate.
When they are released, the three go back to Ostia. The scene above is repeated. But this time, Bandiera goes off to collect beach wood. When he comes back, he finds his brother making love to Monica. In a fit of jealousy, Bandiera attacks Monica, and proceeds to strangle her. Rabbino takes an oar from their boat and bashes it over Bandiera’s head, killing him. Monica then looks at him knowingly, almost pleased. As if her deed is now done. She stands up and disappears into the night, never to be seen again.
Monica, in the end, was the undoing of the brothers. Their unbreakable bond is shattered.
So if Monica was chosen as the symbol for Satan, lust, and temptation — as the brothers’ ultimate undoing — why was it necessary to put Monica through so much trauma? Why did this symbol of evil have to endure so many terrible things?
My theory is this: when Rabbino, Bandiera, and their criminal friends take Monica from the field back to the brothers’ house, they clearly aren’t “saving” her. They are further traumatizing her. Because it isn’t just the group of criminals that have hurt Monica. In one of the flashback sequences, Monica recounts to Rabbino and Bandiera how she survived a rape attempt by a soldier, which was shortly followed by her very own disgusting father raping her. We can presume that these terrible acts happens shortly before the men find her unconscious in the field.
After taking Monica back to their house, three of the men have their way with Monica, while the brothers sit downstairs drinking their wine. They visibly are upset with what is going on. And yet, they don’t stop it. They are complicit. And Monica knows it.
So, she ultimately sets up Rabbino to kill Bandiera. And by killing Bandiera, Rabbino is cast out into the world as a hopeless wanderer. Like Cain, he is alone forever, marked as a murderer, never to know peace again.
Pasolini has always been interested in the confluence of the holy and the human. The Christian and the carnal. In his Trilogy of Life series, he celebrates it (though shortly later, he rejected them and the ideas he put forth.) In Ostia it’s a recipe for tragedy and disaster. Could that have been Citti’s influence? Maybe so. But we also see this sort of theme at play again in Pasolini’s final film Salò.
Like previously mentioned, Ostia is a film that should be considered an integral part of Pasolini’s works. Hopefully, it will one day get some larger recognition.