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Oedipus Rex (Edipo Re) (1967); Medea (1969)

Medea (1969)
August 21, 2013 - 7:30 pm
Billy Wilder Theater

Oedipus Rex (Edipo Re) (Italy/Morocco, 1967)

Directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini

Director Pier Paolo Pasolini’s lyrical telling of the classical tragedy has a strangely personal quality, in its intricate construction of its doomed hero’s subjectivity, and his abject fall upon learning that he has not outrun his terrible destiny.  Modern episodes of a mother giving birth in Fascist Italy complete the director’s suggestion that Oedipus’ inheritance of doom is also his own.

Producer: Alfredo Bini. Screenwriter: Pier Paolo Pasolini. Cinematographer: Giuseppe Ruzzolini. Editor: Nino Baragli. Cast: Silvana Mangano, Franco Citti, Alida Valli, Carmelo Bene, Julian Beck.

35mm, color, in Italian with English subtitles, 104 min. 

Watch the trailer below.

Medea (Italy/France/Germany, 1969)

Directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini

Medea, the wife of legendary hero Jason, thrown over by him for a more politically expedient marriage in a new land, exacts revenge, murdering Jason’s children and issuing curses from the flames of her destruction.  Director Pier Paolo Pasolini frames the classical tragedy as a commentary on a clash of cultures, and the dangers inherent in abandoning a way of life, metaphorizing his key critique of post-WWII Italy.

Producer: Franco Rossellini, Maria Cicogna. Screenwriter: P. Pasolini, based on Euripides’ tragedy. Cinematographer: Ennio Guarnieri. Editor: Nino Baragli. Cast: Maria Callas, Massimo Girotti, Laurent Terzieff, Giuseppe Gentile, Margareth Clémenti.

35mm, color, in Italian with English subtitles, 110 min.

Watch the trailer below.

Preceded by

La Ricotta (Italy/France, 1963)

Directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini

A segment from the anthology film RO.GO.PA.G, director Pier Paolo Pasolini’s absurdist scenario concerns a staging of the Passion Play, in which a poor extra, addicted to curd cheese, is cast as the Savior and perishes due to the indifference of others assembled; an oblique reference by Pasolini to the bankrupt ostentation of the Church.

Producer: Alberto Barsanti, Alfredo Bini, Angelo Rizzoli. Screenwriter: Pier Paolo Pasolini. Cinematographer: Tonino Delli Colli. Editor: Nino Baragli. Cast: Orson Welles, Mario Cipriani, Laura Betti, Edmonda Aldini, Vittorio La Paglia.

35mm, b/w and color, in Italian with English subtitles, 35 min.

Watch the trailer below. 

Part of: 
Pure and Impure: The Films of Pier Paolo Pasolini