Bernardo Bertolucci beautifully captured the essence of Pasolini’s cinematic language — a style at once ancient and radical, stripped to its bones and pulsing with immediacy. “Pasolini’s style can be defined as Romanesque, a frontal style that has a kind of primitive essentialism. His tracking shots resemble the first tracking shots in the history of cinema. His close ups resemble the invention of the close-up.” — Bernardo Bertolucci on Mamma Roma (1962), directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini Pasolini