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No consensus yet.
All Critics (20) | Top Critics (7) | Fresh (18) | Rotten (2) | DVD (1)
The film, made in 1968, was provocative then and remains so now. But it doesn't elucidate its ambivalent moral secrets easily. Apr 12, 2013 | Rating: 4/5 | Full Review…
The film, made in 1968, was provocative then and remains so now. But it doesn't elucidate its ambivalent moral secrets easily.
Derek Malcolm
It is as if Pasolini has imagined how Italy's bland, complacent, stagnant governing class could be blown wide open: like putting a hundredweight of dynamite in the San Andreas fault. Apr 11, 2013 | Rating: 5/5 | Full Review…
It is as if Pasolini has imagined how Italy's bland, complacent, stagnant governing class could be blown wide open: like putting a hundredweight of dynamite in the San Andreas fault.
Peter Bradshaw
The narrative, almost silent in the first half, is unusually clear for a film by Pasolini. Performance by all members of the cast are praiseworthy, though Stamp dominates the first half and Betti, the second. Oct 23, 2007 | Full Review…
The narrative, almost silent in the first half, is unusually clear for a film by Pasolini. Performance by all members of the cast are praiseworthy, though Stamp dominates the first half and Betti, the second.
Variety Staff
What would be pretentious and strained in the hands of most directors, with Pasolini takes on an intense air of magical revelation. Feb 9, 2006 | Full Review…
What would be pretentious and strained in the hands of most directors, with Pasolini takes on an intense air of magical revelation.
The movie itself is the message, a series of cool, beautiful, often enigmatic scenes that flow one into another with the rhythm of blank verse. May 9, 2005 | Rating: 4/5
The movie itself is the message, a series of cool, beautiful, often enigmatic scenes that flow one into another with the rhythm of blank verse.
Vincent Canby
I don't feel ready to write about this mysterious film; perhaps, a week from now, I'll decide it is very bad, a failure. But perhaps it is the most brilliant work yet by that strange director, Pier Paolo Pasolini. Oct 23, 2004 | Rating: 3/4 | Full Review…
I don't feel ready to write about this mysterious film; perhaps, a week from now, I'll decide it is very bad, a failure. But perhaps it is the most brilliant work yet by that strange director, Pier Paolo Pasolini.
Roger Ebert
A very extraordinary piece of work. Jul 18, 2018 | Full Review…
A very extraordinary piece of work.
Penelope Houston
Arguably Pasolini's most finely wrought work, an allegory bringing together his central preoccupations with politics, sexuality, society, art and the irredeemable inauthenticity of bourgeois life. Apr 14, 2013 | Full Review…
Arguably Pasolini's most finely wrought work, an allegory bringing together his central preoccupations with politics, sexuality, society, art and the irredeemable inauthenticity of bourgeois life.
Philip French
Pasolini creates an ethereal mood - and Stamp, smiling ineffably,has never been better. Apr 9, 2013 | Rating: 4/5 | Full Review…
Pasolini creates an ethereal mood - and Stamp, smiling ineffably,has never been better.
Philip Kemp
Whichever of the various interpretations you ascribe to this socio-political parody, the quality is undeniable. Apr 8, 2013 | Rating: 4/5 | Full Review…
Whichever of the various interpretations you ascribe to this socio-political parody, the quality is undeniable.
David Parkinson
A heavily symbolic and highly intellectual look at the bourgeois milieu and the effect that a mysterious visitor, Stamp, has on one specific family. Oct 23, 2007 | Rating: 4/4 | Full Review…
A heavily symbolic and highly intellectual look at the bourgeois milieu and the effect that a mysterious visitor, Stamp, has on one specific family.
You'll either find it brilliant, or maddening. And neither response would be wrong. Apr 11, 2007 | Rating: 4/5 | Full Review…
You'll either find it brilliant, or maddening. And neither response would be wrong.
Ken Hanke
A mysterious young buck visits a wealthy household, makes love to the father, son, mother, wife, and housekeeper and then leaves; all of them are lost without him and fall into separate strange tragedies. Another dry and dull, and inexplicably influential, experiment from Italian masochist Pier Paolo Passolini.
Super Reviewer
Arresting and profound! The film begins with the ending. Stamp acts as an awakener to the pseudo-existence of the bourgeoisie. Stamp's character can be summarized by a Nick Cave lyric: I found god and all of his devils inside h(im). The second half of the film, or upon Stamp's departure, is lingeringly complex. Upon initial viewing and at a cursory level, I find each character reacting to their a...wakening or crisis of the spirit, through means of the physical, insanity, art, sexuality, misguided spirituality, or stripped naked of materialism, possibly lost in the horror of recognition. I know there is a statement in this film about society, the spirit, and its relation to the human condition and experience: I just don't know what to think of it yet.
A very Christian rumination: what is the meaning of life? Pasolini poetically, lyrically offers the Book of Ecclessiates by Solomon (" ... everything is vanity ") for consideration. Made in the Sixties it reflects some of the counter- cultural ideas that were sweeping through the affluent West at that time.
Another strange movie from Pasolini, about a strange visitor and the strange things he does like having everyone fall in love with him! Interesting concept, but the end falls flat, and it's not clear at all.
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