Oedipus Rex [Edipo Re] ***** (1967, Franco Citti, Silvana Mangano, Alida Valli, Ahmed Belhachmi, Luciano Bartoli) – Classic Movie Review 3273

Writer-director Pier Paolo Pasolini’s thrilling 1967 Italian movie Oedipus Rex [Edipo Re] is Oedipus complex.

The star of Pasolini’s first film, Accattone (1961), Franco Citti takes the title role of Oedipus in this beautiful filming of Sophocles’s famous Greek tragic play, in which Oedipus kills his father without so intending and marries his mother Jocasta (Silvana Mangano).

Stunningly shot by cinematographer Giuseppe Ruzzolini mainly in the Moroccan desert amid Moorish buildings, it has an exquisite look, and the extraordinary melée of music (including some by Pasolini as well as by Mozart) produces an exciting aural experience which is matched by the exciting visual and dramatic ones.

Pasolini adapts the screenplay from the Greek tragedy written by Sophocles in 428 BC. The film is an effective mix of the ancient and modern, as it is book-ended by a contemporary story in which a son is born to a young couple in pre-war Italy and the jealous father abandons the baby in the desert.

Now in the ancient world, the child is rescued, named Edipo by Corinth’s King Polybus (Ahmed Belhachmi) and Queen Merope (Alida Valli), and raised as their son. The grown-up Edipo (Franco Citti) learns of a prophecy that he will kill his father and marry his mother, and leaves Corinth, thinking Polybus and Merope are his true parents. Edipo meets his biological father Laius (Luciano Bartoli) and kills him after an argument. Later he is rewarded with kingship and marriage to his biological mother Queen Jocasta (Silvana Mangano).

The ideally cast actors bring swirling power to the great emotions on show. Apart from the perfect Citti, Mangano and Valli, theatre star Julian Beck is effectively cast as the doomsayer Tiresias, and Pasolini pops in too as actor in the film as the High Priest.

It was previously filmed as Oedipus Rex by Tyrone Guthrie in Canada in 1957, and simultaneously made as Oedipus the King by Philip Saville in Britain, with Christopher Plummer, Lilli Palmer, Orson Welles and Richard Johnson.

Franco Citti died in Rome aged 80 on 14 January 2016 after a long illness.

Pasolini centenary 05/03/2022.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3273

Link to Derek Winnert’s home page for more reviews: http://derekwinnert.com/