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La commare secca/The Grim Reaper: An Exercise in Style
During a period of their lives, the families of Bernardo Bertolucci and Pier Paolo Pasolini
lived in the same building in Rome and established a friendship that extended to professional
collaborations. Pasolini invited Bertolucci to participate in his first cinematic work Accattone
(1961) as assistant director (Gili, 1978: 109) and in 1962, Bertolucci released his debut film
La commare secca/The Grim Reaper, it was based on a story by Pasolini, and Bertolucci and
Pasolini wrote the screenplay with Sergio Citti who had been Pasolini's main collaborator for
Accattone. These elements, combined with the fact that Pasolini was such an acclaimed
intellectual, led to The Grim Reaper being categorized as a variation of Accattone with little
distinctive input from Bertolucci. Francesco Casetti's review represents an exception to this
dismissive response, as he recognizes differences in both the film's social approach and style
(Casetti, 1978: 35). His evaluation is shared by this chapter which outlines the way in which
Tlie Grim Reaper, although overlapping with Pasolini's work, presents a different socio­
political perspective within a style blending neorealist aesthetics, Nouvelle Vague
conventions, and structures and visual traits from detective movies and film noir. These
influences are framed within the director's idiosyncratic use of the camera and editing, all of
which make the film a stylistic exercise which has maintained an aura of originality.
The elements of Accattone that emerge in The Grim Reaper range from the
underlying question of the struggle of marginalized individuals to survive, to three narrative
details depicting violence towards a prostitute, the organization of a group meal, and a thief s
death during an attempted escape. By contrast, Tlie Grim Reaper is not centred on a specific
character, and does not have a linear narrative. Additionally, it cannot convincingly be
categorized as a choral film in the sense of a substantial number of characters interacting
within the same environment, their interaction generating narrative momentum. The
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