La Ricotta
Pasolini's segment of the omnibus film Rogopag (an otherwise meaningless title based on the names of its contributors, Rossellini, Godard, Pasolini and Ugo Gregoretti), La Ricotta is a satiric parable on movie-making and religion; as such, it functions as a doubly reflexive prelude to the filmmaker's feature film, The Gospel According to St. Matthew, completed two years later. In La Ricotta, a film is being made on the life of Christ. Orson Welles plays the film director, whose philosophical bent cannot quite encompass one of his actors--the one playing the Good Thief--being allowed to die on the cross before an expectant crowd of journalists. Laura Betti is also featured as “the star". The gross behavior of the film crew and cast contrasts ironically with the sanctity of the story they are recreating--and with the beauty of the film-within-a-film, shot in rich, painterly colors chosen, according to Pasolini, from those used by Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino. Los Angeles Times critic Kevin Thomas writes, “La Ricotta is a work of grace.... Overflowing with largeness of spirit, it is one of Pasolini's most satisfying films.” This was lost on Italian censors, however, who confiscated the film and brought Pasolini to trial, dealing him a four-month suspended sentence and raining “unimaginable persecution” on him for a number of years. (Pasolini quotations from Oswald Stack's interview, Pasolini on Pasolini.)