Teorema (Theorem) (1968)
Movie Info
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Cast
as Paolo
as The Visitor
as Odetta
as Messenger
as Servant
as Boy
as Lucia
as Old Peasant
as Second Boy
as Boy at the Station
as 2nd Servant
as Pietro
as Doctor
as Interwiever
Critic Reviews for Teorema (Theorem)
All Critics (19) | Top Critics (5) | Fresh (17) | Rotten (2) | DVD (1)
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.
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.
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.
Apart from his final feature, Salo, this is probably Pier Paolo Pasolini's most controversial film, and to my mind one of his very best.
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.
Audience Reviews for Teorema (Theorem)
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.
Super Reviewer
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.
Super Reviewer
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