#0000F7/#1013: PASOLINI, Pier Paolo: Teorema (1968)

PASOLINI, Pier Paolo (Italy)
Teorema [1968]
Spine #0000F7/#1013
Blu-ray


2020 synopsis

One of the iconoclastic Pier Paolo Pasolini's most radical provocations finds the auteur moving beyond the poetic, proletarian earthiness that first won him renown and notoriety with a coolly cryptic exploration of bourgeois spiritual emptiness. Terence Stamp stars as the mysterious stranger — perhaps an angel, perhaps a devil — who, one by one, seduces the members of a wealthy Milanese family (including European cinema icons Silvana Mangano, Massimo Girotti, Laura Betti, and Anne Wiazemsky), precipitating an existential crisis in each of their lives. Unfolding nearly wordlessly in a procession of sacred and profane images, this tantalizing metaphysical riddle — blocked from exhibition by the Catholic Church for degeneracy — is at once a blistering Marxist treatise on sex, religion, and art and a primal scream into the void.

2023 synopsis

With Teorema, a coolly cryptic exploration of bourgeois spiritual emptiness, Pier Paolo Pasolini moved beyond the poetic, proletarian earthiness that first won him renown. Terence Stamp stars as the mysterious stranger—perhaps an angel, perhaps a devil—who, one by one, seduces the members of a wealthy Milanese family (including European cinema icons Silvana Mangano, Massimo Girotti, Laura Betti, and Anne Wiazemsky), precipitating an existential crisis in each of their lives. Unfolding nearly wordlessly, this tantalizing metaphysical riddle—blocked from exhibition by the Catholic Church for degeneracy—is at once a blistering Marxist treatise on sex, religion, and art and a primal scream into the void.

98 minutes
Color
Monaural
in Italian
1:85:1 aspect ratio
Criterion Release 2020
Director/Writer



The Film

A

Film Rating (0-60):

60

The Extras

The Booklet

Twelve-page wraparound featuring an essay by film scholar James Quandt.

Commentary

From 2007 featuring Robert S. C. Gordon, author of Pasolini: Forms of Subjectivity.

Alternate

English-dubbed soundtrack featuring the voices of actor Stamp and others.

Introduction

By director Pasolini from 1969.

Interview 1

From 2007 with Stamp.

Interview 2

With John David Rhodes, author of Stupendous, Miserable City: Pasolini’s Rome.

Extras Rating (0-40):

39

60 + 39 =

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Complete Criterion Collection By Spine #

#331: OZU, Yasujiro: Late Spring (1949)

#304: ROEG, Nicolas: The Man Who Fell To Earth (1976)