Trilogy of Life

Trilogy of Life

In the early 1970s, the great Italian poet, philosopher, and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini brought to the screen a trio of masterpieces of medieval literature—Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron, Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, and The Thousand and One Nights (often known as The Arabian Nights)—and in doing so created his most uninhibited and extravagant work. In this brazen and bawdy triptych, the director set out to challenge modern consumer culture and celebrate the uncorrupted human body, while commenting on contemporary sexual and religious mores and hypocrisies. Filled with scatological humor and a rough-hewn sensuality that leave all modern standards of decency behind, these are carnal, provocative, and wildly entertaining films, all extraordinarily designed by Dante Ferretti and featuring evocative music by Ennio Morricone.

Trilogy of Life

Film Info

  • Spine #631

Films In This Set

Special Features

  • New digital restorations of all three films, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks on the Blu-ray editions
  • New visual essays by film scholars Patrick Rumble and Tony Rayns, on The Decameron and Arabian Nights, respectively
  • New interviews with production designer Dante Ferretti, composer Ennio Morricone, and film scholar Sam Rohdie
  • Introduction to Arabian Nights by director Pier Paolo Pasolini
  • The Lost Body of Alibech (2005), a documentary by Roberto Chiesi about a lost sequence from The Decameron
  • The Secret Humiliation of Chaucer (2006), a documentary by Chiesi about The Canterbury Tales
  • Via Pasolini (2005), a documentary featuring archival footage of Pasolini discussing his views on language, film, and modern society
  • Pasolini and the Form of the City (1974), a documentary by Pasolini and Paolo Brunatto about the Italian cities Orte and Sabaudia
  • Deleted scenes from Arabian Nights
  • Pasolini-approved English-dubbed track for The Canterbury Tales
  • Trailers
  • New English subtitle translations
  • PLUS: New essays by critic Colin MacCabe; Pasolini’s 1975 statement “Trilogy of Life Rejected”; excerpts from Pasolini’s Berlin Film Festival press conference for The Canterbury Tales; and a report from the set of Arabian Nights by critic Gideon Bachmann

    New covers by Rodrigo Corral

Purchase Options

Films In This Set

Trilogy of Life

Special Features

  • New digital restorations of all three films, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks on the Blu-ray editions
  • New visual essays by film scholars Patrick Rumble and Tony Rayns, on The Decameron and Arabian Nights, respectively
  • New interviews with production designer Dante Ferretti, composer Ennio Morricone, and film scholar Sam Rohdie
  • Introduction to Arabian Nights by director Pier Paolo Pasolini
  • The Lost Body of Alibech (2005), a documentary by Roberto Chiesi about a lost sequence from The Decameron
  • The Secret Humiliation of Chaucer (2006), a documentary by Chiesi about The Canterbury Tales
  • Via Pasolini (2005), a documentary featuring archival footage of Pasolini discussing his views on language, film, and modern society
  • Pasolini and the Form of the City (1974), a documentary by Pasolini and Paolo Brunatto about the Italian cities Orte and Sabaudia
  • Deleted scenes from Arabian Nights
  • Pasolini-approved English-dubbed track for The Canterbury Tales
  • Trailers
  • New English subtitle translations
  • PLUS: New essays by critic Colin MacCabe; Pasolini’s 1975 statement “Trilogy of Life Rejected”; excerpts from Pasolini’s Berlin Film Festival press conference for The Canterbury Tales; and a report from the set of Arabian Nights by critic Gideon Bachmann

    New covers by Rodrigo Corral