Oedipus Rex
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Oedipus Rex
1967. Italy. Directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini. With Franco Citti, Silvana Mangano, Alida Valli. “The prologue of Oedipus Rex, which is balanced by a modern epilogue, is one of the most striking aspects of the film. It contains a beautifully lyrical evocation of the enigma of woman—the long-held shot of the mother’s blank, mask-like face accompanied by a phrase from Mozart’s C-major quartet, which recurs as a leitmotif throughout the film. The hostility which the child’s presence arouses in his father comes to a climax when the father ‘squeezes the child’s tiny bare feet as if he wanted to crush them.’ And with this Pasolini cuts abruptly but with perfect precision to the empty Moroccan landscape and ancient Japanese flute music which together form the basic elements of his vision of the world of Sophoclean myth” (Roy Armes, The Ambiguous Image, 1976). In Italian; English subtitles. 104 min.