Despite John Water's joy at making fun of people who like Pasolini, I have found in my small experience with him that he is one of my favorite directors (I quite like Italian film in general though). The Hawks and the Sparrows can aptly explain why.

The film is absurdist Marxist comedy, involving two fools and a bird that can talk. The plot is essentially that a man and his son are walking down an Italian road, on the way to go kick some poor people out of their house, and they run in to a talking bird who spouts Marxist jargon to them. They end up eating the bird.

The film piles gags on top of each other, and it is really quite hilarious, what is singular about this movie is that on top of its humor the film is really quite beautiful.

In this film is one of my favorite scenes in all cinema. The young man, who is really quite dumb meets up with his girlfriend and two of her friends in front of one of those burned out houses that were all over the place in Italy after the war. The girl is dressed up like an angel for some cheap school pageant The girls take turns bad mouthing him because of something horrible he did, and he stands there stupidly grinning, and occasionally saying stupid things to try to make up to his lady. When the girls leave, he looks at the house and sees the girl in her cheap costume appear in different burned out windows. He grins stupidly.

People who make absurdist humor always seem to have some grasp of what makes life worth living.

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