Rhapsodies

We care decided to do something different and watch films based on one of the classics of Western Literature, Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron. 

Like Canturbury tales, written about the same time, the Decameron is a collection of stories of all sorts. (Though they lean towards the bawdy) The main difference is rather than being a group of pilgrims’ its a group of upper-class Florentines staying in an abandoned country villa waiting out the plague. I thought this  would make for lots of good material for directors. A word of warning, I haven’t read the Decameron since college and what I remember is mainly from Boccaccio is reporting on the bubonic plague‘s impact on Florence from my reading of the 14^th centurey and The only story I remembered reading was the extremely raunchy tale of the friar who seduced a maid by having her “put the devil in hell.“ 

First film on my list Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Decameron focuses on the raunchier and down to earth tales all shot in Neapolitan dialect. It does not bother with the framing device. In fact it barely bothers to put the pause between stories. This gives the whole thing is a real stream of thought quality, that makes the first half hour a little confusing before you catch on. Another problem I found with it was the medieval world created by filming in. Buildings that are otherwise untouched makes the world seem partially abandoned and falling apart (perhaps with the context of the plague, this was intentional)  

The next film, Paolo and Vittorio Taviani’s Wondrous Boccaccio the framing device it is the whole point of the movie, going into great detail how the world was dying in the storytellers barely escaped of their lives. 

Once they get to the estate the stories almost seem like a distraction with the young characters having quite a good time frolicking. Most of the story selected seem to lean toward more towards the romantic and the other film my favorite is the one about the Abbess who was summoned to discipline a nun who was caught with her lover. The Abbess was so distracted hiding her own lover she put her his longjohns on her head instead of her veil.