Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975) was arguably the most complex director of postwar Italian cinema. His films--Accattone, The Canterbury Tales, Medea, Salo--continue to challenge and entertain new generations of moviegoers. A leftist, a homosexual, and a distinguished writer of fiction, poetry, and criticism, Pasolini once claimed that "a certain realism" informed his filmmaking.

Masterfully combining analyses of Pasolini's literary and theoretical writings and of all his films, Maurizio Viano offers the first thorough study of Pasolini's cinematic realism, in...