Film locations for Accattone

“We're born with a vocation. I was born with the instinct to thieve.”

The fist film from gay, Marxist maverick director Pier Paolo Pasolini, the relentlessly downbeat story of doomed thief and pimp Vittorio (aka Accattone – ‘Scrounger’), starred the then-unknown non-actor Franco Citti, who went on to be a Pasolini regular and appeared as a Sicilian minder in the Godfather movies.

Contributions to the script came from Citti’s younger brother Sergio (who actually plays his brother in the movie) and director-to-be Bernardo Bertolucci.

Filming in Rome, the movie studiously avoids the Roman Holiday sights and picturesque ruins in favour of the dismal slums and concrete tower blocks of the suburbs. The one touch of Ancient Romanesque is Stella’s tearful meeting with her manipulative pimp among the statues of the Via Appia Antica after a disastrous first attempt at prostitution. Most of the movie was filmed in the middle of the Pigneto district, east of the city.

The first shots were filmed in the slums of Via Fanfulla da Lodi, which runs between Via Prenestina and Via del Pigneto.