Pier Paolo Pasolini
A charming guest known as “The Visitor” (Terence Stamp) enters the doors of a typical Italian bourgeoisie household, to leave it in disarray when he spontaneously decides to leave.
As he walks in, he unconditionally loves each and every member in the house, shows them a new light, void of capitalism and materialistic commodities. He stops the maid from committing suicide, soothes the timid son, fulfils the sexually repressed mother, loves the virginal daughter, and comforts the miserable father.
As he suddenly leaves, the house is silently in tears. Each character endures a certain trauma before realising their new selves outside of the bourgeoise lifestyle, par the southern proletariat (the maid). The maid returns to her birthplace and begins to perform profound religious miracles. The son paints and paints in search for something as perfect as his ex-lover. The mother becomes promiscuous, searching for young boys on the street. The daughter forces herself into a catatonic state. And, the father strips down and screams into Mount Etna.
Each character is affected by The Visitor in the same sequence of reactions. In Pier Paolo Pasolini: Contemporary Perspectives, the authors describe it in the following sequence; seductions, confession and transformations.
Pasolini’s masterpiece is nothing less than you would expect. Each and every frame is a pre-planned idea to project symbolic clues to its viewer, making it a different creation each time you watch it.
Teorema
director PIER PAOLO PASOLINI
year 1968
director of photography GIUSEPPE RUZZOLINI
cast TERENCE STAMP, MASSIMO GIROTTI, SILVANA MANGANO, ANNE WIAZEMSKY and LAURA BETTI
words PRIYESH PATEL
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