Teorema

With Teorema, a coolly cryptic exploration of bourgeois spiritual emptiness, Pier Paolo Pasolini moved beyond the poetic, proletarian earthiness that first won him renown. Terence Stamp stars as the mysterious stranger—perhaps an angel, perhaps a devil—who, one by one, seduces the members of a wealthy Milanese family (including European cinema icons Silvana Mangano, Massimo Girotti, Laura Betti, and Anne Wiazemsky), precipitating an existential crisis in each of their lives. Unfolding nearly wordlessly, this tantalizing metaphysical riddle—blocked from exhibition by the Catholic Church for degeneracy—is at once a blistering Marxist treatise on sex, religion, and art and a primal scream into the void.

Italy
1968
98 minutes
Color
1.85:1
Italian
Spine #1013

Special Features

New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
Alternate English-dubbed soundtrack featuring the voices of actor Terence Stamp and others
Audio commentary from 2007 featuring Robert S. C. Gordon, author of Pasolini: Forms of Subjectivity
Introduction by director Pier Paolo Pasolini from 1969
Interview from 2007 with Stamp
New interview with John David Rhodes, author of Stupendous, Miserable City: Pasolini’s Rome
New English subtitle translation
PLUS: An essay by film scholar James Quandt

New cover by Nessim Higson

Blu‑ray 1 Disc $27.96 SRP: $39.95

DVD 1 Disc $20.96 SRP: $29.95

Collector's Sets

Collector's Set

Pasolini 101

Blu-ray Box Set

9 Discs

$174.96

Digital Options

Watch Now On

Special Features

New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
Alternate English-dubbed soundtrack featuring the voices of actor Terence Stamp and others
Audio commentary from 2007 featuring Robert S. C. Gordon, author of Pasolini: Forms of Subjectivity
Introduction by director Pier Paolo Pasolini from 1969
Interview from 2007 with Stamp
New interview with John David Rhodes, author of Stupendous, Miserable City: Pasolini’s Rome
New English subtitle translation
PLUS: An essay by film scholar James Quandt

New cover by Nessim Higson

Cast & Credits

Cast

Terence Stamp: The guest
Silvana Mangano: Lucia
Massimo Girotti: Paolo
Anne Wiazemsky: Odetta
Laura Betti: Emilia
Andrés José Cruz Soublette: Pietro
Ninetto Davoli: Angelino, the postman

Credits

Director: Pier Paolo Pasolini
Written by: Pier Paolo Pasolini
Produced by: Franco Rossellini
Produced by: Manolo Bolognini
Director of photography: Giuseppe Ruzzolini
Music by: Ennio Morricone
Edited by: Nino Baragli
Art direction by: Luciano Puccini
Costumes by: Marcella De Marchis
Production director: Paolo Frascà

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Pier Paolo Pasolini

Writer, Director

Pier Paolo Pasolini’s ability to simultaneously embrace conflicting philosophies—he was both a Catholic and a Marxist; a modern-minded, openly gay man who looked to the distant past for inspiration and comfort; a staunch leftist who at one point in the late sixties infamously spoke out against left-wing student protests (sympathizing instead with the working-class police)—was matched by the multifariousness of his professional life, as a filmmaker, poet, journalist, novelist, playwright, painter, actor, and all-around intellectual public figure. What he is best known for, however, is undoubtedly his subversive body of film work. He was a student of the written word, and among his earliest movie jobs was writing additional dialogue for Federico Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria (1957). Soon he was directing his first film, Accattone (1961), a tale of street crime whose style and content greatly influenced the debut feature of his friend Bernardo Bertolucci, La commare secca (1962), for which Pasolini also supplied the original story. The outspoken and always political Pasolini’s films became increasingly scandalous—even, to some minds, blasphemous—from the gritty reimagining of the Christ story The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964) to the bawdy medieval tales in his Trilogy of Life (1971–1974). Tragically, Pasolini was found brutally murdered weeks before the release of his final work, the grotesque, Marquis de Sade–derived Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975), still one of the world’s most controversial films.