Milestones, Nov. 17, 1975

Died. Pier Paolo Pasolini, 53, maverick Italian film director, poet and novelist; after being bludgeoned with a fence post and run over by his own Alfa Romeo driven by a 17-year-old boy whom he had picked up; in Ostia, Italy. A Marxist with a nostalgia for Catholicism, and a known homosexual, Pasolini managed to rouse the wrath of Italy's Catholics and Communists alike. In 1961 his first major film, Accattone, drew clerical criticism for its romanticizing of pimps and prostitutes. Three years later Pasolini made The Gospel According to St. Matthew, which angered...

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