The world of the Roman pimps and petty thieves has been well explored by Pasolini in his scripts for [Mauro Bolognini's] La Notte Brava and [Franco Rossi's] Mort di un Amico. For his first film as a director [Accattone] he returns to the same theme, because, as he wrote … not so long ago, 'I don't want to explore new ground in my themes but simply to express my ideas with a new technique'.

The question in my mind is, should an artist confine himself to one problem and if so can he really express his ideas in a fresh way taking into consideration the ever changing social structure?

The Pasolini characters and their motivations differ little from those of the two previous films, and the failing of both is again repeated here. Each is a sharp penetration into the Roman slums as they exist (or existed?) but never...