Whoever Says the Truth Shall Die?
When Pier Paolo Pasolini was found murdered on the beach at Ostia in 1975, the official verdict in the courts and in much of the film community was that he was the victim of a homosexual encounter “gone sour”; a victim, in the words of fellow director Michelangelo Antonioni, “of his own characters” (and by extension, his own character?). In Whoever Says the Truth Shall Die?, Dutch novelist and filmmaker Philo Bregstein presents a cogent argument against the official line and explores the possibility that Pasolini's death may have been the result of a right-wing conspiracy. Interviews with director Bernardo Bertolucci, actress Laura Betti and others convincingly indicate that, in any case, Pasolini's murder has never been properly investigated by a government that had, over the years, tried the politically-committed artist no fewer than 33 times on trumped-up charges (mostly having to do with his “blasphemous” films) and had a stake in discrediting this major thorn in their side. Whoever Says the Truth Shall Die?, financed by Dutch television, is, in addition to being a controversial documentary, a superb biographical portrait of Pier Paolo Pasolini that presents him in the context of his own country, where he was a major cultural force.