Cinema
Teorema
Pier Paolo Pasolini · 1968
Synopsis
Milan. A telegram brought by an odd postman announces the arrival of a young visitor at the estate of a wealthy bourgeois family: the father, the mother, their son, their daughter and the maid. The visitor, who has neither name nor past, settles among them and becomes attached to each in turn, the maid, the son, the mother, the daughter, then the father, asking nothing in return.
Context
A book of the same title, written at the same time by the filmmaker, appeared the same year. Terence Stamp plays the visitor, Silvana Mangano the mother, Massimo Girotti the father and Laura Betti the maid; the film has almost no dialogue. Presented at the Venice Film Festival in 1968, it received the grand prize of the Office catholique international du cinéma, which the Vatican disavowed. Prosecuted for obscenity in the autumn of 1968, with the prints seized, the director and his producer, Donato Leoni, were acquitted. It was rereleased in France in 2022 in a restored version.
Who it is for
A short film, almost without dialogue, whose story is a parable; the book written in parallel gives another version of it.
Prizes and reception
Volpi Cup for Best Actress for Laura Betti at Venice in 1968; in France, the film remains prohibited to those under sixteen.
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