Oedipus Rex

Director: Pier Paolo Pasolini

1967 / 104min / DCP

Seeking source materials from which to forge a new “primal cinema,” Pasolini delved into the storehouse of mythic heritage. Taking on Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex, he begins with a prologue set in prewar Italy, and goes on to defy expectation throughout, depicting Oedipus (Franco Citti), unknowingly betrothed to biological mother Silvana Mangano, as a victim of his own ignorant innocence, here far from an unambiguously positive virtue. Pasolini’s first film in color, featuring costumes and art direction that evoke an almost science fiction vision of the ancient world, and a showy role for Carmelo Bene, then-reigning bad boy of Italian stage and screen.

Distributor: Janus Films

Part of Classical Cinema