BFI To Release 6 Film Box SET To Commerate Pasolini's Death

Theorem (Teorema) Blu-Ray Review

Theorem is very important film in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s career in many different ways. It was the first time he had worked with primarily with professional actors (and international actors), first film he did with dealt explicitly with homosexuality and the influence of Luis Buñuel was evident.

Theorem is about a mysterious visitor (played by Terrence Stamp) who appears in the lives of an Italian bourgeois family. He has sexual affairs with all of family… the religious maid, the son, the sexually repressed mother, the daughter and lastly the father. The first half of the film is basically that but about half way thought the film he disappears as mysteriously as he appears. The rest of film is about what happens to the family and how the live their lives after the visitor have touched them in some way.

The film is quite clearly about divine intervention and Terrence Stamp is clearly playing a angel of some kind. Curiously the film was given a special award by the International Catholic Film Office at the Venice Film Festival but was quickly withdrawn when the Vatican protested for obviously reasons. The film has long been talked about because of the ambiguousness of the film. It has been interpreted as statement as a disgust at bourgeois society and the emergence of consumerism in Italian Society. Other interpretations are it’s both a critique of bourgeois society and the working class maid and Pasolini’s other struggle with his homosexuality.

It’s a fascinating film from one of Cinema’s great enigma’s Pasolini who was of course brutally murdered soon after the release of his still shocking Salo. He worked in neo-realism, films based on mythology, surrealism, and social satire and often in the same film. He was full of many contractions but his body of work is one of the most fascinating in post-war European cinema.

★★★★☆

Ian Schultz

Rating: 15
DVD/BD Release Date: 27th May 2013 (UK)
Director: Pier Paolo Pasolini
Cast: Terence Stamp, Massimo Girotti, Anne Wiazemsky, Silvana Mangano

Buy: Theorem (DVD + Blu-ray)

BFI Adding Pasolini's Theorem (Teorema) To Home Release This May

Following its theatrical release this month, the BFI will bring Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Theorem (1968) to Blu-ray for the first time in the UK when it is released complete and uncut in a Dual Format Edition (includes a DVD disc) on 27 May 2013. The new high definition digital transfer has restored picture and sound. Special features include a filmed interview with Terence Stamp, a feature commentary and an optional English language soundtrack.

A handsome, enigmatic stranger (Terence Stamp) arrives at a bourgeois household in Milan and successively seduces each family member, not forgetting the maid. Then, as abruptly and mysteriously as he arrived, he departs, leaving the distraught members of the household to make what sense they can of their lives in the void of his absence.

In this cool, richly complex and provocative political allegory, Pasolini uses his schematic plot to explore family dynamics, the intersection of class and sex, and the nature of different sexualities. After winning a prize at the Venice Film Festival, Theorem was subsequently banned on an obscenity charge, but Pasolini later won an acquittal on the grounds of the film’s ‘high artistic value’.

Theorem is visually ravishing, with superb performances from its international cast and a brilliantly eclectic soundtrack featuring music by composers ranging from Mozart to Morricone.

Special Features
• Presented in both High Definition and Standard Definition;
• Optional alternative English language soundtrack;
• Audio commentary by Italian film expert Robert Gordon;
• An Interview with Terence Stamp (2007, 34 mins, DVD only);
• 2013 theatrical release trailer;
• Illustrated booklet with an essay by Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, a review by Philip Strick and biographies of Pasolini and Stamp.

Pe-order/buy:Theorem (DVD + Blu-ray)