The Hawks and the Sparrows

The Hawks and the Sparrows (Uccellacci e uccellini, 1966) is an Italian allegorical comedy by Pier Paolo Pasolini you can watch online on iFILM. Totò and Ninetto Davoli play a father and son wandering a road that goes nowhere in particular. Along the way they pick up a talking crow — a left-wing philosopher who lectures them on history, God, and the failures of ideology between stops.

To give the crow's arguments some historical weight, the film detours into a medieval parable: the same two actors, in the robes of Franciscan monks, are dispatched by St. Francis himself to convert hawks and sparrows to Christianity. It does not go well. The film cuts between the two timelines with the ease of someone who finds the contradictions more interesting than any resolution.

Totò was one of the great figures of Italian comic cinema, and this was among his last major performances before his death in 1967. Pasolini draws something quieter and stranger from him than the broad farce he was famous for. The result is a film that thinks out loud and doesn't mind if you argue back. Stream The Hawks and the Sparrows (1966) online on iFILM.