Review for Rogopag

Any 60’s film with ‘Let’s wash our brains’ in the title has GOT to be worth a look, right?  The curiously entitled ‘RoGoPaG – Let’s Wash Our Brains’ is definetly one to watch out for, particularly delivered up in this exquisite Blu-Ray edition from Eureka (part of the excellent ‘Masters of Cinema’ series).

‘RoGoPaG’ is a portmanteau film, actually quite popular at the time, with four shorts made by four hip European ‘art-house’ Directors (Ro – Roberto Rosellini; Go – Jean Luc Godard; Pa - Pier Paolo Pasoliniand G - Ugo Gregoretti) corralled together by Italian Producer Alfredo Bini.

The early sixties was an explosive time for experimentation and inner exploration. The US Beat movement had become almost respectable academics and the press were even willing to give the slightly anarchic views of Timothy Leary an airing. So in short, ‘Rogopag’ doesn’t seem quite as hat-stand a collation as it might otherwise appear in the context of any other decade.

Joined merely by loose themes the four films vary from flat-out surrealism to laugh aloud python-esque comedy – and everything in-between.

Roberto Rossellini, first-up and acknowledged leader of the Italian neo-realist school, offers up the saucily labeled Virginity. It seems as politically incorrect as it could be with a forceful business man putting himself upon a young air hostess in a Tokyo hotel – having made lude suggestions to her throughout the flight. Oddly, the hostess films everything she does, in true Warhol fashion, to send to her devoted fiancé. Though we never truly understand why. The resulting combination of art-film meets Benny Hill is entertaining enough though hardly very thought-provoking, unless you count ‘shall I go and make a sandwich’.

Next up is Jean-Luc Godard, here just three years after making his masterpiece Breathless, who turns in a piece called ‘The New World’, a film far shorter than any of the other three,which shows the demise of a relationship against the back-drop of a nuclear explosion in Paris which has left everyone mysteriously taking pills – a slightly clumsy early sixties drug reference. Against this surreal back-drop, a beautiful woman admonishes her protesting man. Beautifully rendered nonsense – perhaps?

Pasolini’s La Ricotta is a much more satisfying addition, showing a troupe of actors and crew attempting to make a film of the Passion of Christ, directed by (wait for it) none other than Orson Welles, clearly playing himself, and all other Director’s up, in a delicious parody that sees one of Christ’s compatriots on the cross (a part played by a simple farmer) who, whether filming or not, never quite manages to get a bite of food to his mouth for various reasons.

The final segment from Ugo Gregoretti (who he?) is a more focused exploration of consumerism. I guess Gregoretti’s inclusion was an attempt to catapult the little known Director (outside of Italy anyway) to the status of his colleagues. ‘Free Range Chicken’ is a somewhat clumsy juxtaposition between consumerism (‘I’m buying it but I’m not happy and I can’t afford it’) and a lecture on advertising delivered in a robotic voice.

‘RoGoPaG’ is certainly better in total than a dissected sum of its parts and, having attempted to précis each segment in a few short words, makes me realise that it really needs to be seen.

This edition comes in a very good Blu-Ray / DVD double-pack and comes with a trailer and a 56 page booklet featuring new essays by Tag Gallagher, Arthur Mas, Martial Pisani, and Pasquale Iannone. (I didn’t receive this as part of the set) as well as a new translation by Tag Gallagher of excerpts from an oral history about the film, and rare archival imagery.

Well worth picking up.