Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
In pre-war Italy, a young couple have a baby boy. The father, however, is jealous of his son - and the scene moves to antiquity, where the baby is taken into the desert to be killed. He is rescued, given the name Edipo (Oedipus), and brought up by the King and Queen of Corinth as their son. One day an oracle informs Edipo that he is destined to kill his father and marry his mother. Horrified, he flees Corinth and his supposed parents - only to get into a fight and kill an older man on the road…
Pasolini's radical adaptation of Sophocles frames the myth with a striking autobiographical prologue and epilogue set in 20th-century Italy, giving the ancient tragedy a deeply personal psychoanalytic dimension. The cinematography, shot in the Moroccan desert with vivid, sun-bleached colors and raw earthy textures, is genuinely exceptional — one of cinema's most visually arresting renderings of antiquity. The plot faithfully preserves the inexorable tragic logic of Sophocles while Pasolini's framing device adds genuine novelty. Acting is competent but uneven across the ensemble. The ending, while faithful and moving, is somewhat diffuse in its modern-day coda, losing some of the concentrated power of the classical climax.