Pier Paolo Pasolini was a poet, journalist, philosopher, linguist, novelist, playwright, filmmaker, newspaper and magazine columnist, actor, painter, and political figure. This extraordinary cultural versatility made him a highly controversial figure and one of the defining public intellectuals in 20th-century Italian history. Pasolini’s unsolved and extremely brutal abduction, torture, and murder at Ostia in November 1975 prompted an outcry in Italy, where it continues to be a matter of heated debate. He is known for directing The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964), his ‘Trilogy of Life’—The Decameron (1971), The Canterbury Tales (1972), and Arabian Nights (1974)—and Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975).
