Page - 87 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 05/01

Nicola Martellozzo The Soundscape of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964) ABSTRACT Il Vangelo secondo Matteo (The Gospel According to St. Matthew, IT/FR 1964), by the Italian film director Pier Paolo Pasolini, is one of the most interesting and widely acclaimed film representations of the life of Jesus. Its reception in the Catholic world has reflected the alternating fortunes of Pasolini himself, but over the years critics have come to fully appreciate its merits. While the director made faithful use of the dialogue in the Gospel, he constructed a new – but plausible – imagination, or “architecture of reality”, based on an intertextual code with intersecting pictorial, architectural, biblical and sound references. This essay aims in particular to employ a semiotic approach to an- alyse the musical motifs in the film and the way in which they convey precise meanings and values to the viewer about the figure and life of Jesus. Songs and musical compo- sitions are leitmotifs that punctuate the narrative, interweaving with the visual compo- nent to form a full-blown language in its own right. KEYWORDS Pier Paolo Pasolini; The Gospel According to St. Matthew; Musical Leitmotifs; Intertex- tuality; Audio-visual Syntax BIOGRAPHY Nicola Martellozzo graduated from the University of Bologna with a degree in cultural anthropology and ethnology. The author of an essay on the phenomenology of religious conversion (2015), he has presented papers at various specialist conferences (Italian Society of Medical Anthropology 2018; Italian Society of Cultural Anthropology 2018; Italian Society of Applied Anthropology; Italian National Professional Association of An- thropologist 2018). He is currently working with the psychoanalytic association Officina Mentis and is a member of its advisory committee. For the association he has also or- ganized a series of seminars on Ernesto de Martino. His main research interests in the field of religion are Vedic rituality, religious forms in the ancient world and post-colonial cultural syncretisms. DOI: 10.25364/05.4:2019.1.6 The Soundscape of The Gospel According to St. Matthew | 87www.jrfm.eu 2019, 5/1