Teorema
Pier Paolo Pasolini (1968)
An unnamed visitor turns up at the home of a wealthy Italian bourgeois family. During his visit, the five members of the household – father, mother, son, daughter and maid – partake of the sublime: they’re drawn to the visitor’s extraordinary physical beauty; each of them has sex, or at least physical intimacy, with him. Although these encounters involve a measure of guilt and doubt for the family members, their transformative effect is irresistible, as they explain to the visitor and the film audience. The visitor departs, with almost as little explanation as there was of how or why he arrived. The family’s experience with him nullifies the material opulence of the household’s way of life: they make various efforts to come to terms with what they’ve had and now been deprived of. The maid, Emilia, returns to the rural village of her birth to sit and wait for the second coming before she begins to exhibit saintly properties herself (she heals the sick and levitates spectacularly). The daughter, Odetta, after lovingly fingering the photographs she took of the visitor, sinks, with a clenched fist, into a catatonic trance. The son, Pietro, becomes a painter; he sees it as the artist’s essential mission in life to try to conceal that something he once possessed has been lost. The mother, Lucia, drives through the streets of Milan trying to find the visitor and, when she doesn’t find him, has sex with other young men. The father, Paolo, a wealthy industrialist, gives his factory to his workforce and strips himself of all property, including his clothes. At the end of Theorem he wanders naked through a desert landscape which has been seen interstitially throughout the film: in the film’s final shot he yells in anguish at his loss.
It sounds schematic and it is – the title tells you that too. The religious and social satire is obvious enough – Theorem also suggests the artistic, sexual and political choices made by Pasolini himself. The film opens with mock news coverage of the factory owner’s decision to hand over his worldly goods to the workers: in their interviews with a television journalist, they’re grumpily sceptical about bourgeois largesse. Perhaps this is partly a joke at Pasolini’s own expense; the presence of his mother Susanna in the role of one of the rural peasants on the lookout for miracles also keeps the director’s personal background persistently in mind. But the film is completely entertaining and often funny – I don’t think I’d rate it if I hadn’t found it so. It’s obvious in both halves what’s going to happen so a lot depends on how it’s done, and it’s done very well. The only thing that could be unexpected for an audience seeing the film for the first time is the visitor’s departure – even if he does announce it during an evening meal which therefore turns out to be a last supper. (This announcement also features in the BFI’s trailer for the film, which is something of a spoiler.)
Like the members of the family, the viewer misses the visitor: you find yourself looking out for him as they do. You hope he’ll bestow favour on one of them – and therefore on you – by reappearing. Terence Stamp is perfect for the role: since it’s an idea rather than a character he just has to be himself, and the contrast between his personality and the meaning of what he’s playing here is consistently amusing. Stamp is far from a great actor but he comes over as an amiable, accommodating chap; this chimes with the visitor’s Christ-like acceptance of each member of the family. He and the son sleep in the same room in different beds. While the visitor’s asleep, Pietro tiptoes from his bed and gently pulls down the sheet covering his neighbour’s body. The visitor wakes up and the boy weeps with shame and embarrassment. The visitor doesn’t bat an eyelid; he just gets out of bed and into Pietro’s. On a brilliantly sunny morning, Lucia stands on a balcony; she hears the alpha male barking of a dog and sees the visitor playing with the animal by the lake. She takes off her clothes; when the visitor appears she apologises but he obligingly services her. The previously overprotected daughter takes on a new sexual identity in his presence. The father takes sick and needs, and gets, some tender loving care from his guest. The fusion of Pasolini’s Catholic background and sexual orientiation is enjoyable here: you keep being reminded of the injunction of your own religious teachers in early adolescence to let Christ enter into you.
Silvana Mangano has a dazzling pallor and a brittle hauteur – her Lucia looks as starved as she is soignée. Massimo Girotti’s performance as the father is similarly impressive – because he cuts such a commanding figure, this makes Paolo’s vulnerability more striking. He’s perfectly groomed and his expensive suit is the emblem of how well adapted he is to material success so literally denuding him is shocking. As the maid Emilia, Laura Betti’s blend of sly determination and monomania is very witty. Anne Wiazemsky’s virginal quality is used for pathos and comedy in the role of Odetta, and very effectively. Andres Jose Cruz as Pietro is the least distinctive presence – and the monologue he’s saddled with, about the artist’s duty to assert form and not reveal his grubby futility, goes on too long. Cruz is likeable, nevertheless, and his unprepossessing physical appearance is actually a pleasant counterpoint to the amazing looking people around him. The landscape of Milan itself is nearly always grey and sunless – not far away from that vast desert, with what looks like volcanic dust blowing over it: Pasolini sees this as the void underlying the bourgeois lives on display (an eruption has occurred but left ashes in its wake). While the visitor’s around, though, the weather within the security gates of the family’s house and large grounds is reliably lovely. The DoP is Giuseppe Ruzzolini; on the soundtrack the Mozart Requiem and Ennio Morricone are a beguiling combination. With Nanetto Davoli (the love of Pasolini’s life) and Carlo De Mejo (Alida Valli’s son).
15 April 2013
