Sulla soggettiva libera indiretta

In the field of film studies, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s essay on the cinema of poetry has long been considered an essay of semiotics on the point-of-view shot. In fact, it belongs to the so-called semiological phase of Pasolini’s non-fiction writings, and in it Pasolini coins the neologism “free indirect point-of-view shot”. This study, instead, argues that the fulcrum of Pasolini’s essay on cinema of poetry coincides essentially with the existence, in cinema, of a language of poetry as opposed to a language of prose. And, according to Pasolini, poetry in cinema arises from the adoption of a stylistic register that he decides to call free indirect point-of-view shot, which entertains with the occurrences designated by the terms from which it derives (point-of-view shot on the one hand, and free indirect discourse on the other) a relationship variously specious, starting from a terminological baggage much closer to the tools of stylistic criticism than to semiotics. Moreover, comparing this essay with the rest of Pasolini’s non-fiction writings and artistic production, this study shows that these theoretical and critical formulations developed by Pasolini contain as many reflections on himself, on his work and his choice to make cinema as the most authentic form of making poetry.