Pasolini regarded il Boom—the massive economic and industrial development of postwar Italy and the wave of rapid social change that followed – as a tragic catastrophe, a sweeping away of Italy’s last vestiges of pre-modern culture by replacing them with the depredations of consumer capitalism. Alternately caustic and gently comic, this melancholy film offers a parable of those changes, tracing the odyssey of a father and son through a landscape of degradation and exploitation as they follow a talking crow that delivers a Marxist critique of the situation. A homage to silent comedy, Hawks and Sparrows proved to be Pasolini’s parting shot at contemporary Italy before he turned to his cycle of mythic films.