Pigsty

Year of Release:  1969
Director:  Pier Paolo Pasolini
Screenplay:  Pier Paolo Pasolini
Starring:  Jean-Pierre Leaud, Marco Ferreri, Ugo Tognazzi, Pierre Clementi, Alberto Lionello, Franco Citti, Anne Wiazemsky

This Italian film interweaves two separate storylines.  In the first one, set in an unnamed desolate, volcanic landscape, at an unspecified historical period, a young cannibal thug (Clementi) roams around attacking soldiers and with a small band of similar outsiders ravages the country.  In the second story, set in 1967 Germany, Julian (Leaud), the son of a hugely wealthy industrialist, is unable to connect with politically-engaged girlfriend Ida (Wizemsky).  When Julian inexplicably falls into a coma, he is used as a pawn in a power game between his father (Lionello) and a business rival (Tognazzi).

This film is a bleakly savage satire on human nature and cruelty.  Although there is at first glance little to connect the first, almost completely dialogue free historical story to the contemporary one, there are similar themes recurring throughout both.  The first deals with the human capacity for cruelty and anarchy, the second connects capitalist business to Nazism (Pasolini was a committed Marxist).

The film is very well-made and full of memorable images, it is also indubitably a work of art, and a powerful and fearsome one at that.  However it is so unremittingly bleak, it's hard to imagine many viewers actually enjoying it.