Hailed as a classic of Italian Neorealism, Accattone is Pier Paolo Pasolini's first film. Vittorio "Accattone" Cataldi (Franco Citti) is a young man in the Italian suburbs, eager to live without responsibilities or a regular job. He prostitutes his wife, until she is thrown in jail. Accattone then falls in love with a woman who represents an innocent, bourgeois life he cannot attain. He dies while symbolically trying to escape the life of scrounging and slumming for which he was destined.

Pasolini's origin in the literary, rather than cinematic, tradition is apparent from his lack of technical devices; what results is an almost documentary portrayal of life in the suburbs of Rome.