Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 09/07/24

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Saturday, September 7, 2024

Teorema (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1968)

Terence Stamp in Teorema

Cast: Terence Stamp, Silvana Mangano, Massimo Girotti, Anne Wiazemsky, Laura Betti, Andréa José Cruz Soublette, Ninetto Davoli, Carlo De Mejo, Adele Cambria, Luigi Barbini, Giovanni Ivan Scratuglia, Alfonso Gatto. Screenplay: Pier Paolo Pasolino. Cinematography: Giuseppe Ruzzolini. Production design: Luciano Puccini. Film editing: Nino Baragli. Music: Ennio Morricone.

Is Pier Paolo Pasolini's Teorema artsy fiddle-faddle or a trenchant satire of the bourgeoisie? Yes. It's both. It's a heavy-footed Marxist diatribe and a beautiful display of cinematic technique. If ever a film was caviar to the general, it's Teorema. At this point, I want to recommend that anyone who subscribes to the Criterion Channel go watch Rachel Kushner's commentary on Teorema in her "Adventures in Moviegoing" collection. And if you don't (and even if you do), then read James Quant's essay on the film at the Criterion Collection site. Both of them suggest why Pasolini's film continues to awe and/or annoy viewers. There's a fine line between the pretentious and the provocative, and Teorema has continued to straddle it more than 60 years. For myself, I find it an immensely amusing film, which may be enough for me to recommend it to anyone who has a taste for caviar.