Raetsonwe Redundant and unnecessary.

Micitype Pretty Good

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Catangro After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Martin Bradley At the beginning of "Teorema", in a wordless, sepia-tinged montage, we are introduced to almost all the main characters in Pasolini's film. It's a clever device, almost Hitchcockian, and it could be the beginning of a thriller, though being a Pasolini film we know this won't be a thriller. The character who doesn't appear in this montage is played by Terence Stamp but suddenly there he is right in the middle of things and his affect on everyone is profound. Who is he and why is he here? It's never made clear, of course. Although a very physical presence his role is allegorical. Is he an angel, (there is a strong religious element in the picture), or a devil or simply a seducer since he does seem to have sex with everyone in the family, male and female, including the maid who ends up levitating and performing miracles. He certainly affords everyone a form of release, turning their lives upside down and with it their bourgeoisie pretensions. If we are going to tear down the bourgeoisie we may as well do it with sex; it's a lot more fun than beating them to death.Stamp, of course, remains the most beautiful thing on screen though Silvana Mangano as the mother gives him a run for his money. No-one really has to act; all they simply have to do is respond to Pasolini's camera and, with no real narrative structure, that's fairly easy. Sex may be Pasolin's weapon of choice but the film is quite clearly a Marxist 'fantasy' and is also very obviously the work of a gay director. I'm not so sure anymore if it's the masterpiece I thought it was all those years ago bu it stands up remarkably well and remains one of the great Italian films of its decade.

tomgillespie2002 The bourgeoisie have long been a target for many of the great European film-makers. They were an object of fascination and humour for Luis Bunuel and were often portrayed as outwardly repulsive by Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Jean-Luc Godard. In Theorem, Pier Paolo Pasolini ponders whether they are beyond hope and redemption, so far removed from our society that they are now of a different species altogether. The film begins outside of a factory, where the workers gather outside trying to understand why the owner has fled, leaving the entire company in the hands of its employees. They seem angry while a news reporter tries to comprehend the situation.In an upper-class Milan suburb, a wealthy family are informed of the imminent arrival of a stranger by a enthusiastic postman. The man, known only as the Visitor (Terence Stamp), suddenly appears at their home seemingly without reason, and immediately begins to affect the family and their maid. He stops the maid (Laura Betti) from committing suicide, soothes the son (Andres Jose Cruz Soblette) of his anxieties, eases the fears of the opposite sex of the daughter (Anne Wiazemsky), seduces the sexually repressed mother (Silvana Mangano), and nurses the seriously ill father (Massimo Girotti) back to health. He vanishes as quickly as he appeared, leaving his subjects in various states of bewilderment and enlightenment.Is the man God, the devil, or both? Ultimately, this question doesn't really matter. It's clear that the Stranger is a divine presence, but it's the effect he has on the unwitting family that is the most fascinating. The maid, a humble woman of low birth, returns to her village and is worshipped as a saint, and even appears to levitate at one point. The bourgeoisie family, however, start to slowly implode, climaxing with the father stripping himself naked and wandering into a desolate land. The Visitor seems to unlock their potential, only they - the maid aside - are unable to handle such divinity brought to them on a human level. The final scene includes a scream that may be ecstasy or pure terror, but Theorem doesn't make it that easy to unravel. This is a complex and fascinating work by one of the Italian masters, and one that will have you trying to pull apart its themes days after you have watched it.

Bene Cumb For me, Italian and Swedish artistic films have a lot in common, beginning with static scripts and ending with poker-faced performers. Usually are Pasolini's films different from this pattern, but not with Teorema where the above mentioned features are fully visible. Of course, directing and camera work are great and the actors-actresses are at least good, if not more, but I am not very much into profundity connected with religion and sexuality. And boredom among the rich, long dialogs with literary connections, background classical or church music - all this has been used before and after Pasolini. And those endless scenes without any text… Well, the ending was also not according to my taste.Luckily, the film is only 1,5 hours, but I could recommend it only for selective , like-minded audience.

ardavan_sh2006 i'm afraid that "teorema" is a complicated movie & it's not like Pasolini's "trilogy of life" which could attract the mainstream viewers.this movie has an obscure structure with a mysterious stranger who makes everything upside-down. (who's that stranger? another Billy Budd?(with the same actor), why he sexually influences them all ?)..it could be interpreted as Pasolini's attack to the fake solidarity in a bourgeois-class family. what i like particularly in "teorema" is Pasolini's masterwork with color, landscapes n architecture.Depends on your taste & recommended for Pier Paolo's fans,only.