His heart exploded on the night of November 2 1975. His pleas of “Mamma! Mamma!” had done nothing to stop the Alfa Romeo from running over him. When it sped away, his body lay prostrate on a dirt football pitch, under a moonless sky. A frigid wind howled through the surrounding hovels of Ostia and, not far behind, the river Tiber slow-flowed, black and dense like crude, into the sea.

He’d sustained fractures on his breastbone, left jaw, 10 of his ribs and all the fingers on his left hand. His liver was torn, as was the nape of his neck. His slim, muscular arms were speckled with obsidian bruises. A long strip of small, red marks ran over his pale spine, in a symmetrical pattern that matched the Alfa’s tyre treads. The hair on his head was kneaded with earth, blood and oil, his nose flattened to the right, his left ear almost entirely detached.

Even so, all those who saw the body the next morning knew exactly who he was. Onlookers could still make out the elegantly sunken cheeks, the diamond-shaped cheekbones and the long eyebrows, straight and serious under a pensive forehead. They all knew it was Pier Paolo Pasolini.