The omnibus film as a ollage og auteurs: the title Ro.Go.Pa.G is made up of the four directors’ surnames (Rossellini, Godard, Pasolini and Gregoretti) but it is remembered for La ricotta. Gregoretti develops the theme the segments have in common – the “merry beginnings of the end of the world” quoted at the opening of the film – looking at boom period Italy and at the same time telling two stories which are integrated with each other like a thesis and what it proves: a grotesque conference on the mechanisms which regulate the consumption of Italians and the advertising strategies aimed at creating ever newer desires, and the proof of such teorie in the story of Togni who, together with his family, is imprisoned by his compulsive buying: the latest television, the most powerful car, a patch of the exclusive land named ‘Switzerland of the Lombards’. The ‘pollo ruspante’ (free-range hen) in the title is a symbol of freedom, the opposite of battery hens which are exposed to rigid discipline which gives them the rhythm of their lives. Togni’s son with a toy pistol in his hand claiming to be Pasolini, refers to a news story of the time which saw Pasolini at the centre of a smear campaign, even accusing him of armed robbery.

                                                                                                                                                    Alice Autelitano