look homeward, angel
by Douglas Messerli
Pier Paolo Pasolini (screenplay,
based on the plays of Sophocles, and director) Edipo re (Oedipus Rex) /
1967, USA 1984
There are several directorial intrusions and flourishes in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s film version of the Oedipus Rex story, but the most essential difference is that, somewhat inexplicably, he begins the story in the 20th century, with the birth of a young boy to a handsome father who is a member of Mussolini’s militia. The loving mother, Jocasta (Silvana Mangano) attempts to placate her husband’s immediate hatred of the child he feels is stealing the attentions of his wife, but without success. Perhaps these are, so the director suggests, the emotional responses of many fathers to their sons’ births—Pasolini is said to have “hated” his own father who also as a lieutenant in Mussolini's forces—and Pasolini is simply demonstrating his personal mythological link to the actual Sophocles dramas, the original "Mamma's boy."
In any event, the film suddenly shifts to a Northern African landscape
wherein, in ancient times, a child is being taken into the wild by a servant to
be slaughtered. As in the Greek story, the servant cannot bring himself to kill
the child, and leaves it to survive in the wilderness, with another passerby
almost immediately coming to the baby’s salvation.
The rest of Pasolini’s version is plotted very much like the original. But it is the Moroccan landscape and the amazing costumes by Danilo Donati that make all the difference, along with the strange almost ritualistic actions that the director imposes. This Oedipus (Franco Citti), growing up in the loving home of Merope (Alida Valli) and Polybus (Ahmed Belhachmi) is almost a spoiled young man, who, after hearing the terrible warning of the oracle, determines that he must leave Corinth.
It is, of course, on the pilgrimage that he encounters the arrogant Laius (Luciano Bartoli), his real father. But unlike the original where it seems like Oedipus’ murder of Laius is the result of a sudden misunderstanding of the right of way, Pasolini presents it as a determined act of rage— perhaps in retaliation for the anger against all old men who abuse youth and reminds him of the Oracle’s legend—as the young Oedipus must battle and kill at least three other guards before attacking Laius.
By the time Oedipus reaches the huge palace at Thebes, accordingly, the
handsome young man is already a kind of legend, and able to quickly do away
with the Sphinx before marrying Laius’ widow.
Pasolini, casting one of his favorite young “toughs,” Citti as Edipo,
shows the young man almost as a child at play in his role of King, donning a
preposterously imitation beard that seems to mock the Babylonian emperor
Nebuchadnezzar, while obviously sexually satisfying the still-beautiful queen,
who just happens to be his own mother. As The
New York Times critic Vincent Canby observed when Pasolini’s film was first
shown in the US in 1984, the actor “has the rough good looks of a boxer, but
the performance is so stolid that when the camera comes in for a tight close-up
of his
The rudimentary stone palace set against a hostile desert landscape
seems to reiterate the same message that someday this whole edifice, a prop of
the greatest proportions, may suddenly collapse back into the sands from which
it has sprung. All it takes, of course, is the appearance of Tiresias (Julian
Beck) to begin Corinth’s downfall, ending in death and a blindness that is,
perhaps, not so very different from the arrogant young man’s insistent
innocence of his own destiny.
If Pasolini’s telling of the great drama, at times, is utterly cold, so
too are the rituals which its heroes are asked to play out. Despite the
director’s general delight in his films of demonstrating the carnality of life,
here the characters never truly strike fire, despite the innocent perversity of
their acts.
Los Angeles, June 23, 2017
Reprinted from World Cinema Review (June 2017).
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