I wanted to but couldn't!

How sad is this?

A Disappointing Continuation

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

It really helps when you know the myth of Oedipus. You understand the story much better and can more easily follow the stages of madness of Oedipus.For Greeks, it was not a dishonor to make fun of their Gods, as many did in comedies. But it certainly was a dishonor not to recognize their power. The Gods were so powerful for the Greeks that they could tell you their horrific prophecies and you would still have the same fate despite this. I think the work really encapsulated all of Greek theatre in it. There were people in masks and crowds representing the chorus that in a hidden way was the protagonist narrator of the story back BC. There was a protagonist in his hero's journey and the story was practically the same.One difference was how Pasolini blended the modern times with the antiquity of Greece. Truly amazing how the film starts and end by the same sequence: spinning around, looking up at the treetops, and end with the finite horizon of the green valley. This shows that even though the times have changed and now instead of carriages people travel in cars, and even though Oedipus is not truly blind, nothing has really changed. It's the same journey in the hero's head.This also very strongly links with Pasolini's Porcile (Pigsty) for me. The same combination of modernity and antiquity to begin with, however there, the world is parallel. I would even go as far as to say that Julian was none else but Oedipus. He says he killed his father, ate human flesh and is still full of joy. So was Oedipus. He was full of joy at the end, when he was blind, couldn't see anything and wanted to hear nothing, he didn't belong in this world.Another striking similarity is the carriage that appears in both these films. There is a certain irony in that too because in Porcile there are three women following the carriage instead of men, but still, nothing is different. And Julian still kills his father, that is what his modern self is referring to. And when I was reviewing Porcile, I wasn't sure what the pigs represented. But now I think I know. The pigs are the chorus, the Gods or the society. The pigs are the silent narrators of the story yet again.The portrayal of modern man in both those films is very similar too. He's lost, as if he lives in the past reality and is consumed by the business of the modern world. Deep inside he is still the same man, the same hero undergoing the same journey. The boy is not actually eaten by pigs, but rather hung from the cross in Porcile. And Oedipus truly does lose his sight despite having eyes. There is even a certain feeling that fate is truly predisposed before a child is even born.Another motif in both those films was the musical instrument. In Procile, father of Julian plays the harp that seems to be controlling the world with his Nazi German magic wand. In Rex, Oedipus plays the reedpipe, and I noticed that the sound of this reedpipe recurs through the entire movie many times. It's like all those people are music that a god or gods control, and they don't even know about it.Overall a really cool film, I liked most of the things about it.

one of films who remands. the rules of Greek tragedy. the limits of interpretation. the manner to use the myth as contemporary mirror. the art of Piero della Francesca. the conflict between past and present. a film of actors. because each trace of acting defines not the vision of Pasolini about the fate of king from Thebes but its search of truth. the truth - basis of all. Edipo re impress. for atmosphere, for costumes and the use of myth.the eyes of Franco Citti. the presence of Silvana Mangano. the first scenes who are parts from a possible Visconti. the end as warning about the price of fight against yourself. Edipo re is support for reflection. not a new version of well known myth because the important details of myth are insignificant. not example of high art. because it is far to be a show. it is only exploration of meanings. and the sketch about different forms of pride and sacrifice. looking for authenticity. precise definition of life.

This film is possibly the most brilliant - color - film AS ART that I I have ever seen. It combines beautiful and fascinating poetic color visuals, unusual landscapes and locations with the classic story of Oedipus.The story is told with very little dialog, (subtitles for the dialog where present) and this enhances the internal, primal feeling of the piece. Pasolini was often compared to Fellini, but I feel he is much better, because he uses his visuals always to advance and to the purpose of the story. To me Fellini's visuals were often purposeless antic oddity. Here, any ambiguity is not in the story, but in character motivation, which lends modern reality and immediacy to the whole.The acting style combines the classic Greek use of stylized mannerisms and mask work seamlessly with smaller modern film acting. The setting transitions from 1960s Italy to a primitive/tribal landscape which lends itself beautifully to the timeless/ancient feeling of the Greek story. An example of detail: tribal body painting is used to represent both a ritual queen in shades of Elizabeth R, to the whiteness of a plague death; the costume designs are a combination of rustic and Egyptian/Papal religious.Cast mainly with little known actors, the big name actor in this film was international star Alida Valli, who has only two or three brief scenes. Her talent is fairly wasted here, but her presence is riveting as the aging, childless queen. (Valli: A brilliant Italian actress who had a brief career here in the 40s-50s, then returned to Italy/Europe, and balanced her commercial work in slashers with more oddball artistically challenging work. Her work often embodies "excess within control," the dichotomy of superficial clam with seething internal emotion. PARADINE CASE, THE THIRD MAN, THE MIRACLE OF THE BELLS, CASSANDRA CROSSING, EYES WITHOUT A FACE, SENSO, WALK SOFTLY STRANGER.) This film is the kind of work I would hope to be a part of as an actress and artist. This film could easily be in theatres today and be even more appreciated now than it was at the time of its making.Theatrically literate, visually stunning, gutsy, and intelligent. Enjoy!

Pasolini's Oedipus Rex is a crazy, brutish parade of primitivism, psychosis and weird head-gear - the play as Sophocles himself might've mounted it were he under the influence of some strong hallucinogen. This is one of Pasolini's favorite pastimes, the staging of old literary works as nut-job pageants suffused with a genuine feel for the random craziness of ritual, the sense of people adorning themselves in keeping with impenetrably bizarre superstitious imperatives. The array of outlandish head-wear in this movie would be enough for a museum - three-foot-tall cylindrical gold crowns; helmets composed of curved iron segments dangling from the brim of a saucer-shaped hat; garlands of woven straw worn not horizontally around the skull but vertically ringing the face. Even the Oracle of Delphi gets in on the act, sporting a tall snow-man-shaped pottery-mask-looking contraption with a sprig of vegetation sticking out the top. It's as if ancient life were nothing but one big act of head-wear oneupmanship.The play survives intact despite Pasolini's odd-ball preoccupations. The director's favorite Cro-Magnon thespian, Franco Citti, portrays the hapless Oedipus, while the formidable Silvana Mangano tackles the role of Jocasta, Oedy's self-absorbed mother/wife. The melodrama plays out with all its earth-shaking inevitability, following Oedipus from foundling to patricidal loon to incestuous king to blind wandering fool; Pasolini staging the action so bluntly, so rawly, that we could be watching an ancient performance captured by curious aliens with movie-cameras. The acting as usual is variable. Citti, a physically striking if technically inept actor, creates an Oedipus who seems completely free of snappy psychological accoutrement - an Oedipus who is, quite literally, an over-grown child. As Jocasta, Mangano displays the kind of subtle technical command that Citti utterly lacks, but doesn't have enough scenes to really bring forth a character (Pasolini uses her mostly as an embodiment of overwhelming feminine presence, much as he did Maria Callas in Medea, the companion-piece to Oedipus). There's very little that's subtle about the way Pasolini attacks the central psychological issues of Oedipus, the stuff that has made for one psychiatric treatise after another since the days of Freud. The emotions are splashed all over the screen in typically unrestrained Pasolini fashion. Oedipus is a ranting lunatic; the scene where he kills his father, Laius the King of Thebes, is a homicidal tantrum to make Travis Bickle blush. Citti is not a commanding enough actor to give his scenes any real melodramatic weight, but this doesn't matter given that Pasolini is less interested in melodrama than he is in conveying the idea of psychosis as a kind of universal human condition. This is not Oedipus the grand tragic figure, this is Oedipus the psychopath. There is little in this character that could be described as redeeming - he's a cowardly, childish, mindlessly violent hypocrite. He wears a false beard to show that he's a false king, and after he blinds himself, so he will no longer have to look upon the horrors he himself has been guilty of unleashing, Pasolini transports him to the modern world for a sort of ironic coda that, like the central juxtaposition in his semi-masterpiece Porcile, makes explicit his point about modern humanity's inability to escape its own primal urges.This isn't Intro to Greek Literature Sophocles, it's a mining of Sophocles for the kind of brutishness that turns Pasolini's crank. The question one must ask again is, How the hell does Pasolini get away with it? Why does the kind of material that would seem the stuff of exploitation and rank tastelessness in another director's hand become, in Pasolini's, the stuff of primitive/modern art? There's nothing particularly beautiful in the images, except for the savage beauty of the prehistoric settings. There's almost none of that high-culture flush that symbolists like Fellini and Bergman were able to give their film-buff-coddling "masterpieces." The secret must be in Pasolini's straight-forwardness, his complete lack of moral pretense. He's one of the few directors I can think of who could get away with turning Oedipus into an example of humanity's inherently psychotic nature and still not come across like a high-minded putz. He tears Oedipus Rex down from the realm of stodgy high-culture and re-envisions it as a cry of psychopathic rage, set in a world as inscrutable as the mind.