When it appeared in 1959, Una Vita Violenta was immediately acclaimed for its depiction of a highly unpicturesque life of poverty and for Pasolini’s rendition of the strange new dialect born in the Roman shanty-towns. With its starveling boy prostitutes and venomously violent fascist youths, it’s an extraordinary portrait — half-novel and half-documentary, a collection of ‘episodes’ rather than short stories — of people on the edge of the city, of the economy, of politics.

‘At the corner of the bridge, above him, under a kind of white column like a tombstone, two whores were standing, crossly, one in a red topcoat, the other, testy and rumpled, wearing a black sweater. Both were squat, with bellies that made them look pregnant, short fat legs, black, hairy faces, low foreheads like monkeys. They were swinging their purses.’ p18