Posted: Sun., Dec. 31, 1967, 11:00pm PT

Teorema

Theorem

(Italy)

By Variety Staff

Aetos. Director Pier Paolo Pasolini; Producer Franco Rossellini, Manolo Bolognini; Screenplay Pier Paolo Pasolini; Camera Giuseppe Ruzzolini; Editor Nino Baragli; Music Ennio Morricone; Art Director Luciano Puccini

Silvana Mangano Terence Stamp Massimo Girotti Anne Wiazemsky Laura Betti Ninetto Davoli

Teorema is an allegory in two acts which merges eros and religion in an up-to-date context. Pier Paolo Pasolini, ever sensitive to religion, eroticism, homosexuality and social forces, employs all these elements to detail his premise that a sudden revelation of possible human self-fulfilment can permanently mar the upper strata of society and exalt its sub-strata.

With a simple, mathematical design, he systematically pursues this proposition with the device of guesting an unknown in an upper bourgeois household. The visitor (Terence Stamp) is a university student with a heavenly divining rod enabling him to offer fulfilment and authenticity through physical love.

For the provincial maid Emilia (Laura Betti) the sexual experience becomes a holy illumination. The deviate son, Pietro (Jose Cruz), is solaced. His mother (Silvana Mangano), disrobes on the country estate to partake of the visitor's magic. Teenage daughter Odette (Anne Wiazemsky) invites him to her room for her first connubial fling. The father, Paolo (Massimo Girotti), a captain of industry, discovers his true and radically different personality in the arms of his supernatural guest.

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.

(Color) Available on VHS. Extract of a review from 1968. Running time: 100 MIN.