Medea (1969)

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Movie
German title Medea
Original title Medea
Country of production Italy , Germany , France
original language Italian
Publishing year 1969
length 110 minutes
Rod
Director Pier Paolo Pasolini
script Pier Paolo Pasolini
production Franco Rossellini
Marina Cicogna
music Elsa Morante
Pier Paolo Pasolini
camera Ennio Guarnieri
cut Nino Baragli
occupation

Medea is a film by the Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini with Maria Callas in the lead role. It was created in 1969 and is a free adaptation of an ancient Greek myth . The plot is based on the literary model of Euripides from the year 431 BC. Chr.

In Medea , Pasolini stages the meeting of two cultures in impressive images using motifs from the Medea myth and the Argonaut saga. The incompatibility of these cultures causes the relationship between the two main characters, the pragmatic rationalist Greek Jason and the archaic animist priestess Medea , to end in a bloody tragedy.

Designed as a criticism of the western consumer societies with their mass culture, the film tries to evade easy consumption through a fragmented narrative structure and its idiosyncratic film language. From the film critics, albeit with reservations, mostly positive, it had little success at the box office.

content

The film begins with a prologue : The king's son Jason is raised by the centaur Cheiron , who in a ten-minute monologue gives him a mythological worldview in which all things are animated and imbued with meaning. If Jason is a small child at the beginning of this monologue, at the end of the monologue he appears as a young man. Cheiron has also changed, he is no longer a centaur, and he now reports of this world as a bygone world that has long since lost its mythical nature. The centaur finally reveals to Jason that because of his origins he has a right to the throne of Pelias in Iolkos , but that in return he will demand the Kolcher's Golden Fleece .

The following part of the film shows in 15 minutes the mythical-religious world of the Kolchians, in which Medea , the daughter of King Aietes of Colchis, lives as high priestess in an ethnographic report with almost no dialogue . The sequence culminates in a detailed fertility ritual in which a young man is killed, dismembered and his body is carried out onto the fields by the other members of the tribe to secure the harvest.

The Greeks are now breaking into this archaic, barbaric world to steal the fleece that was worshiped by the Kolchians. When Jason and Medea meet, she falls for him and helps him steal the sacred ram's skin. On the run from the pursuers, she kills and hacks up her brother and throws him in parts out of the car. The collection of the body parts by the Kolcher gives the Greeks the head start through which they can escape to their ships. Medea drives with them, but she quickly notices that she has not only sacrificed her homeland, but also her faith for her love for Jason. In the world of the Greeks, all her knowledge as a priestess is of no importance; the soul of the Kolchians eludes her. Jason brings Pelias the Golden Fleece, but the latter denies him the throne. Jason shows no more interest in Iolkos and waives. He dismisses the companions and goes to Corinth with Medea .

Years have passed when Jason met the centaur again in Corinth, who, however, met him in two forms, as a man and as a centaur: “We are both in you,” explains the human centaur, “the sacred centaur of your childhood and the profane one the time of growing up, because the sacred is preserved alongside the new profane. Even if the logic of the sacred is so different from that of our world that we can no longer understand it, nothing will prevent it from awakening feelings in you, feelings beyond your considerations and interpretations: in truth you love Medea. "

But Jason has already left Medea and decided to marry Creusa , the daughter of King Creon of Corinth. Medea lives with their children at the gates of the city, because the Corinthians still see her as a dangerous sorceress. When she realizes that, despite all the adjustment, she will probably never be accepted as a stranger, she turns back to her faith and finds new access to her old, mythical world. In a vision she takes revenge on Creusa and kills her with a burning robe that she wants to give her for her wedding. But even before the planned wedding, Creon banishes Medea and her children, because their presence is a heavy burden on Creusa and endangers the connection with Jason. Now Medea sees no way out: she really sends Creusa the wedding dress. In the face of the gift, Creusa can no longer bear her doubts and throws herself into death. The king then commits suicide. Medea, on the other hand, calls her children over and kills them in what can be called an almost tender act. Then she sets her house on fire. From the roof of the burning house she hurls her despair at Jason. The film ends with her scream "Now nothing is possible!"

Production and publication

The citadel of Aleppo is Pasolini's Corinth

Medea was born between May and August 1969 in the Cinecittà studios (Rome) and in Turkey ( Cappadocia ), Syria ( Aleppo and surroundings) and Italy (Laguna di Grado ; Lido Marechiaro, Anzio ; Piazza dei Miracoli , Pisa ; Chia near Viterbo ) turned. Pier Paolo Pasolini directed and also wrote the screenplay, Ennio Guarnieri was responsible for the camera work, Nino Baragli for the editing, and Pasolini and Elsa Morante took care of the music selection . The film was produced by Franco Rossellini and Marina Cicogna for the companies San Marco (Rome), Les Films Number One (Paris) and Janus Film und Fernsehen (Frankfurt am Main).

The world premiere of the film took place in Milan on December 27, 1969 . A month later it was presented to the international public with a gala premiere at the Paris Grand Opéra . The gala was a social event and took place in the presence of the President's wife Madame Pompidou , several ambassadors and numerous celebrities from culture and society. The reactions to the film were restrained, however: "[you] applauded politely and went to dinner". Further premieres followed in Japan (1970), the USA (1971) and Finland (1972). In the Federal Republic of Germany the film was shown for the first time on April 17, 1972 on television ( ARD , 10:50 p.m.); it was only released in cinemas in October 1979, almost ten years late. On January 2, 1988 the premiere was on the television of the GDR ( DFF 2 ) and on November 14, 2000 the film was released on video .

Medea was Pasolini's largest budget film, but its uncompromising conception had only very modest economic success. In the first five years the film in Italy grossed just under 30 million lire, only a fraction of the more than 915 million lire that Pasolini's most successful film Teorema (1968) achieved at the box office in the same period. Even his debut film Accattone (1961) had produced a multiple of this at around 390 million lire.

Film analysis

Literary background

Medea and the saga of the Argonauts

The film is a free adaptation of the tragedy Medea des Euripides , which is limited to “taking a few quotations” ( Pasolini ) from the original . In addition, in the first half, the film uses, comparably fragmentary, motifs from the Argonauts saga , which tells the story of Medea ; the text of Euripides begins only in Corinth. Above all, the narrative elements are omitted, such as all the adventures of the Argonauts, but there are also gaps in the story of Jason and Medea that make it difficult to understand the plot. The staff is reduced to the bare minimum, the numerous famous heroes of the Argonauts saga, among them Heracles and Orpheus , become a bunch of nameless young adventurers, almost all other minor characters are omitted completely.

Pasolini focuses the film entirely on the encounter between Jason and Medea, whose relationship is not actually told; he uses this constellation as a framework and background for the clash of the completely opposing cultures of the two main characters:

“ Medea is the juxtaposition of the archaic, priestly universe with the world of Jason, a rational and pragmatic world. Jason is the contemporary hero (the men currently ) who has not only lost the sense of the metaphysical, but no longer even asks himself questions of this kind. He is the willless 'technician' whose pursuit is only for success. "

- Pier Paolo Pasolini

This contrast is already reflected in the cast, when Pasolini puts a rational, success-oriented competitive athlete at the side of the great tragedy Maria Callas with the amateur actor Giuseppe Gentile . Gentile won the bronze medal in the triple jump for Italy at the 1968 Summer Olympics .

Eliade, Frazer, Lévy-Bruhl

Pasolini has always emphasized in interviews that the basis of the film is not primarily to be seen in the Medea myth, but above all in theoretical texts by Mircea Eliade , James Frazer and Lucien Lévy-Bruhl on the history of religion , ethnology and anthropology . This was initially only marginally noted by the film critics and, if at all, only seen as a general intellectual foundation of the film or related to the ethnological character of the sequence in Colchis. However, later scientific analyzes show that these texts have a much broader meaning, right down to the details of the visual language and the furnishings.

The three theorists mentioned deal with questions of myth and religion, albeit with different emphases and results. Among other things, the question is whether there is a mythical thinking in which logic , the separation of subject and object , consistent time and space and causality only play a subordinate role. In addition, the relationship between this mythical thinking and logical thinking is examined: are there two completely independent types of human knowledge , is the mythical thinking model a pre-form of logical thinking, or are there two equal variants that only differ in different societies are strong? Pasolini takes a stand in the centaur's words: “The sacred remains intact alongside the new profane. Even if the logic of the sacred is so different from that of our world that we can no longer understand it, nothing will prevent it from awakening feelings in you, feelings beyond your considerations and interpretations. "

Cave architecture in Cappadocia

Eliade , whose work Das Heilige und das Profane (1957) is explicitly mentioned in the first (working) script, lamented in his works like Pasolini the loss of importance of myth (and religion) in modern society. From him, Pasolini borrowed the concept that relates the pairs of opposites sacred - profane and chaos - order to archaic and modern (ancient) societies. The sacred , original societies are characterized by periodically recurring rituals that establish and stabilize their internal order and place them in close relation to the world (cosmos) through myth. In contrast, the principle of modern societies is linear progress , further and further removed from the sacred.

This contrast between a circular and a linear principle, of circle and line, determined large parts of Medea's visual conception . Pasolini moved the world of the Kolchians from the Black Sea into the seemingly organic landscape of Cappadocia with its rounded cave architecture embedded in nature, equipped it with a number of circular cult objects such as sun wheels and showed their recurring rituals in detail. On the other hand, he set the linear, purposeful world of the Greeks: when they reach the world of the Kolchians, the Argonauts line up on the beach before they break into this world regardless of their goal, the theft of the Golden Fleece, to reach. The world of the Greeks in the film is the strictly geometric, rational architecture of the citadel of Aleppo and the cathedral district of Pisa, in which the scenes in Corinth were filmed. When Medea flees with the Greeks, on arrival in Greece, in a furious scene, she laments the lack of a center, a loss through which she loses access to her mythical world.

Frazer's main work, The Golden Branch (1890), deals with the comparative study of religious ideas and rites in antiquity and premodern societies. Here Pasolini found the material from which he compiled the fictional customs and rites of the Kolchians . Presumably the human sacrifices of the fertility rites of the Khonds were the inspiration for the rites of the Kolchians. The Khonds are an indigenous tribe in the Orissa Province in northeast India. In their sacrificial rites there are many features that also characterize the ritual in Medea : the determination of a sacrifice from the midst of the community and his respectful veneration, the sacrificial ceremony with the participation of the whole tribe, from which no one was allowed to be excluded, the (in the film only implied) immobilization of the victim with drugs, his ritual painting before the sacrifice, the tying to a stake, the dismemberment of the corpse and the bringing and burying of the body parts in the fields by the tribe members.

Pasolini's philosophical worldview

Pasolini's philosophical worldview was fed by the experiences and insights he gained as a young man in the 1940s and early 1950s in the rural world of Friuli and that of the sub-proletariat of the Roman suburbs. He contrasted these (sub) societies with their own cultural value systems and traditions with the hedonistic nihilism of the socially and politically dominant petty bourgeoisie , to which he himself belonged, and associated them with the utopia of a new social beginning after fascism . The economic boom in Italy in the 1960s, however, destroyed this utopia, the prosperous world of consumption assimilated and integrated these opposing worlds without resistance and, not least through the mass media, eliminated the cultural differences in favor of the bourgeoisie on which Pasolini's utopian design was based.

Pasolini and the Third World

In Medea , Pasolini transfers this central theme, the loss of traditions and values, the mythical and the sacred in an increasingly rational, materialistic and consumer-oriented present, to the world of ancient myths and contemporary history:

"If you like, this could just as easily be the story of a third world people, an African people who experience the same catastrophe as they come into contact with Western materialistic civilization."

- Pier Paolo Pasolini

In the 1960s, Pasolini had increasingly occupied himself with the Third World , as early as 1961 he was traveling to India with Elsa Morante and Alberto Moravia , followed by numerous trips to Africa. In 1967/68 he made the film notes about a film about India ( Appunti per un Film sull'India ) , immediately before Medea he shot the notes on an African Orestie ( Appunti per un'Orestiade Africana ) in Uganda and Tanzania , again against the background a Greek myth, the Oresty of Aeschylus (458 BC).

After the foreseeable failure of his utopia in Italy and the western industrial nations, Pasolini looked for allies in the newly emerging African nation-states with their pre-industrial, religiously influenced cultures, for examples of culturally independent developments in modern societies that were independent of capitalism . But this hope, too, was increasingly disappointed, it remained to him that he protested the “destruction of the cultures of the Third World by the industrialized countries in the name of progress, growth and freedom and the right to resistance - and if only that the self-destruction as it is carried out by Medea in her desperation - posited empathically ”.

Film language

Medea is a bulky film that undermines the conventional expectations of an audience on almost every point. It starts with Maria Callas' occupation of Medea, for which not only artistic but also commercial reasons certainly played a role. Maria Callas was still a big star in 1969 and had already caused a sensation as Medea in Cherubini 's opera of the same name . So far, however, she had turned down all film offers because she “doesn't believe in the possibility of transforming theater into film.” ( Callas )

But Pasolini had no intention of filming an opera either, he doesn't let Callas sing a single note in her first and only film role, only speak a few dialogues, he stages her, which is famous for her expressive stage presence, against her over long stretches Image , statuesque, strict, withdrawn. "I am very well informed about their professional skills, but they hardly interest me," he said in an interview, "It is the Callas' individual traits that I can use to shape the Medea. [...] Here is a woman who in some ways can be considered the most modern of all women; but a woman from ancient times lives in her - strange, mysterious, magical, with terrible inner conflicts. ”( Pasolini ) Pasolini discovered parallels in Callas' life, saw in her a modern Medea: she came from a simple social environment and was in another, alien world of stars and the upper class - and she too was in a serious crisis after the painful separation from Onassis that had just taken place in 1968 .

The film also refuses to play a role in the dramaturgy ; instead of a continuous plot, Pasolini lines up motifs from the two sagas chronologically, but with large omissions. With Medea's revenge vision, he then breaks the linear sequence and offers a second version of the death of Creusa and her father, treated in a cinematic way that is completely equivalent. In addition, the lack of commitment to a film genre is irritating : the film alternates between fable, ethnographic reportage and love drama, and a love drama that tells the relationship between Medea and Jason in an unusually reserved and emotionally chilled manner.

Also unusual is the unexpected, detailed depiction of a human sacrifice by the Kolchians, whose ethnographic-documentary style contributes to the strong direct impact of the depiction of violence. Pasolini had initially planned several rituals, some of which were already shortened during the intensive discussion with Rossellini, but some of them were only removed from the film when it was cut.

The sound also contributes to the irritation, Pasolini uses music that is very strange to Western ears, sacred music from Japan and love songs from Iran , the obvious asynchronicity and sometimes alienation of which add a layer of their own to the film. In addition, Pasolini does not use the original sound for Medea either , but has the film synchronized completely in the original version in order to counteract the "natural" and to be able to artistically control the voices.

The cinema of poetry

Last but not least, the film was repeatedly accused of numerous technical defects, especially in the camera work, the connections , the editing ("cuts like a cinematographic illiterate"), but also in the equipment (" anachronisms like cathedrals and potatoe dinners ”). The technical competence of the team is beyond question: “[Pasolini] had the best technical staff that was available at the time” ( Laurent Terzieff ). In fact, the team handled the connections with virtuoso: as Medea in Corinth from her house to the royal one Palast hurries, in the few seconds of this completely homogeneous-looking sequence she actually crosses four filming locations that are far apart, some months between which were taken: interior shots in the house of Medea: Cinecittá Studios, exterior view: Anzio near Rome, Corinth, outer wall: Aleppo , Syria, inner palace district: Pisa.

“I try to find a language that drives the average person or the average viewer into crisis in their relationship to the language of the mass media. [… It] happens precisely because I consider the tyranny of the mass media to be a form of dictatorship to which I am not even prepared to make the smallest concessions. "

- Pier Paolo Pasolini

In his essay The Cinema of Poetry , Pasolini developed his own theory for a modern film language as early as 1965. It is based (abbreviated) on the assumption that images as the basis of a language of film, in contrast to the historically evolved literary language, cannot be objectified, for example, cannot be recorded in a kind of binding dictionary. Instead, they always remain subjective and concrete in nature, never become abstract. Just as in poetry ( lyric poetry ) the subjective use of language, subject to its own formal criteria, is always recognizable as an artistic medium, this subjectivity should also be specifically addressed in film; So it is not about, as in traditional narrative cinema, "not letting the viewer feel the camera" ( Pasolini ), but on the contrary, about making the camera tangible as an artistic-poetic tool of style. The features perceived as faults in traditional film, such as "the only seemingly random backlighting with its flashers on the film, the movements of the hand-held camera, the extended journeys, the deliberately incorrect assemblies, the irritating connections, the endless persistence in one and the same image, etc. etc. "( Pasolini ) become the stylistic device of a" recent technical-stylistic tradition. "( Pasolini )

In Medea , the theoretical reflection on the possibilities of a modern film language is combined with the rejection of a mass culture that equates society, the possible appropriation of which Pasolini tries to evade through the uncompromising nature of his film language.

Reviews

“The story of Medea, borrowed from the ancient legend, who exercises terrible vengeance as an outcast wife, interpreted as a human tragedy between barbaric-sacred and civilized-rationalistic culture. The aesthetic stylization of great passions and cruelties requires a certain familiarity with the mythological background and Pasolini's poetic-philosophical worldview. Worth seeing."

- Lexicon of international film

“The film could serve as a thorough investigation of what imagery can achieve aesthetically in modern film. [...] Medea is an important film, which we hope will not only be found at a few festivals. "

- Die Welt : February 21, 1970, Peter H. Schröder

“Perhaps Jason and his men are todays predators, Medea their victim. But too much searching is needed to get the root of this imposing but too often febrile version of an ancient tragedy. Shooting in Syria, Turkey and Italy give fine landscapes and exoticism but not the life and inexorable tragic overtones to give this a basic impact that would have made its many symbols and themes on nature […], basic instincts of love and religion and its political aspects clearer. "

“Jason and his men may be today's perpetrators and Medea their victim - but it's too difficult to get to the heart of this impressive, yet too often feverish, version of an ancient tragedy. Syria, Turkey and Italy make a great and exotic backdrop, but the life and the relentless tragic undertones that it would take to encompass the numerous symbols, questions of nature, […] the fundamental motivations of love and religion and are missing to work out their political aspects. "

- Variety : March 11, 1970, Mosk.

“It is unmistakable, although Pasolini never expresses this clearly, rather it always only suggests that this Medea means the relationship between Europe, this calculating world without gods, to the countries of the Third World - the relationship as Pasolini sees it. [...] Pasoloni is a master of beauty, beauty and horror, which with him becomes beauty because it is full of sacred gestures. "

- Neue Zürcher Zeitung : (May 9, 1970, Martin Schlappner)

Medea is uneven, but I admire the reckless courage of its conception, even when it goes wrong. When it is right, as in the poetic and funny prologue, delivered by the centaur, and in its eerie evocation of Medea's world, which is (according to Pasolini) our subconcious world, it is superb.

“ Medea is inconsistent, but I admire the daring courage of his conception, even where it doesn't work. Where it works, such as in the poetic and comic prologue of the centaur and in the eerie evocation of Medea's world, which (according to Pasolini) is our subconscious world, there it is great. "

- The New York Times : October 29, 1971, Vincent Canby

“The profound interpretation offered, that old myth is being contrasted with a new atheistic era, may be assumed by those who were able to discover more human history in these orgies of kitschy crowd scenes than in the catastrophe paintings of a pilot [...]. Arbitrarily used fragments of the Argonauts saga only resulted in wild actions without background or inner connection. "

- Münchner Merkur : April 19, 1972, Effi Horn

“In that upper class of cinema, in which Pasolini undeniably belongs, his Medea moves between the grades of trying, mediocre and bad. [...] Regardless of her interpretative intent, Pasolini's myth travesty succeeded in captivating the eyewitness through the imagery. "

- Süddeutsche Zeitung : April 19, 1972, KH Kramberg

“It must be admitted that in front of such beautiful, perfect films, critical speaking can be lost: the effect of this incredibly strong material, which Pasolini tells in incredibly moving images, resists the description in an almost humiliating way. [...] Pasolini's merits are not those of a great interpreter of myths, but of a great director. "

- Stuttgarter Zeitung : April 19, 1972, Ruprecht Skasa-Weiss

Medea is beautiful to watch, baffling to follow, and interesting to analyze on paper. As a piece of filmmaking, presumably aimed at attracting audiences, it is unnecessarily slow, emotionally sterile, and extremely boring.

“ Medea is wonderful to look at, difficult to follow and interesting to analyze. As a film, presumably intended to win an audience, it's unnecessarily slow, emotionally sterile, and extremely boring. "

- Films and Filming : July 1975

“What might have moved Pasolini to take on the Medea material, to cancel the legend's colorful adventures, not to actually tell them at all, but to let them guess? […] We see: strange faces, strange landscapes, strange customs, arranged in a train of thought that is difficult to understand - fantastic ethnology . "

- Die Zeit : October 12, 1979, Dieter E. Zimmer

“This kind of partisanship for the mythical, the pre-civilizational also determines [...] the cinematic structure and quality of Medea . It is a wild, violent, contradicting, disharmonious and irreconcilable film, in front of which the conventional questions about an aesthetic success or failure seem like inappropriateness. "

- Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung : October 19, 1979, Gerhard R. Koch

Trivia

Pasolini and the Callas "Pasolini was pretty much the least likely director who would ultimately bring Callas to film," writes a biographer, and in fact the starting point was more than improbable: on the one hand the communist intellectual, self-confessed homosexual, scandal director , Publicist and author, who also couldn't do much with opera, and on the other hand the upper-class and completely apolitical diva, notorious in Italy - probably wrongly - for her capriciousness, who is indignant to Teorema , one of Pasolini's last films left in the middle of the screening and unceremoniously declared the director crazy to friends. But there was another factor: Callas found itself in a serious crisis after separating from Onassis, now it was determined to prove its independence and reinvent itself. The offer for Medea could not have come at a more favorable time: Callas was close friends with Rossellini, the producer of the film, trusted him and accepted.

In fact, things developed completely unexpectedly: From the beginning there was a feeling of mutual trust and respect between Pasolini and Callas, the "difficult" diva proved to be absolutely uncomplicated, professional and reliable despite a lack of film experience and the sometimes very difficult shooting conditions. Soon a deep, mutual affection arose between the two of them, they spent a lot of time together during and after the filming, Pasolini drew them and publicly dedicated poems to her, they went to friends and on vacation together: Greece, Africa, ...; in the tabloid press there was already speculation about an impending marriage. It didn't come to that, but after Pasolini's death in 1975, Callas spoke of having lost a brother.

The homeland of the centaur Cheiron , the director's alter ego in the film, was filmed on the tiny island of Safon in the Grado lagoon ( location ). Pasolini discovered the island while sailing with a long-time friend, the painter Giuseppe Zigaina . He rented the island and spent a few summer weeks there himself in his "archaic, mythical" world.

See also

literature

  • Susan O. Shapiro: Pasolini's Medea: A Twentieth Century Tragedy. 2009. Abstract for the 105th CAMWS Annual Meeting, Minneapolis, April 1-4 , 2009 (PDF), accessed December 31, 2009.
  • Angela Oster: Modern Mythographies and the Crisis of Civilization. Pier Paolo Pasolini's Medea. In: Journal for Aesthetics and General Art History. Issue 51/2, 2006, pp. 239-267.
  • Piero Spila: Pier Paolo Pasolini. Gremese, Rome 2002, cf. Pp. 90-93.
  • Pier Paolo Pasolini: The Centaur's Dream. Interview with Jean Duflot 1968/1975. Translated from the Italian by Hermann Zannier. Oberbaum, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-928254-17-0 (Original edition: Les Dernières paroles d'un impie. Pierre Belfond, Paris 1981, Italian first edition: Pier Paolo Pasolini. Il sogno del centauro. Editori Riuniti, Rome 1983, first publication of the Interviews: Jean Duflot: Entretiens avec Pier Paolo Pasolini. Pierre Belfond, Paris 1970)
  • Friends of the Deutsche Kinemathek (Ed., Editor: Michael Hanisch): Pier Paolo Pasolini. Documents on the reception of his films in the German-language film review 1963-85. Berlin 1994, on Medea cf. Pp. 133-145.
  • Barth David Schwartz: Pasolini Requiem . Pantheon Books, New York 1992, on Medea cf. Pp. 552-565.
  • Peter Bondanella: Italian Cinema: From Neo-Realism to the Present. Continuum, New York 1990, ISBN 0-8264-0426-X . Excerpts: Myth and Marx. ( Memento of February 5, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  • Franca Faldini and Goffredo Fofi : Pier Paolo Pasolini. Lights of the suburbs. The adventurous story of his films. Translated from the Italian by Karl Baumgartner and Ingrid Mylo. Wolke, Hofheim 1986 (compiled from: L'avventurosa storia del cinema italiano, raccontata dai suoi protagonisti. Feltrinelli 1981 / Mondadori 1984), on Medea cf. 126–138 (with numerous quotes from people involved in the film)
  • Stephen Snyder: Pier Paolo Pasolini. Twayne Publishers, Boston 1980, ISBN 0-8057-9271-6 , on Medea cf. S 95-103. Online version of the text on Medea: Medea: Myth and Reason. ( Memento of February 5, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  • Otto Schweitzer: Pier Paolo Pasolini. With testimonials and photo documents. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1986, ISBN 3-499-50354-9 , cf. Pp. 103-105.
  • Pier Paolo Pasolini. Film series 12. Hanser, Munich 1977 (edited in collaboration with the Deutsche Kinemathek Foundation ), on Medea cf. esp. pp. 160-166, 204, 221.
  • Nathaniel Teich: Myth into Film: Pasolini's Medea and its Dramatic Heritage. In: Western Humanities Review. Volume 30, No. 1, 1976, pp. 53-63.
  • Pier Paolo Pasolini: Medea. Garzanti, Milan 1970.
  • Pier Paolo Pasolini: Il "Cinema di Poesia". In: Film Critica. No. 156–157, April – May 1965, German version: Das “Kino der Poesie”. From the Italian by Anna Zaschke, in: Pier Paolo Pasolini. Series Film 12. Hanser, Munich 1977, pp. 49–77 (translation from the edition in Empirismo eretico. Milan 1972)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The working title of the film was Visioni di Medea , for some of the visions cut in the final version of Medea see: Roberto Chiesi: Das träumende Ich. The motif of the vision in Pasolini's work. In: Bernhart Schwenk, Michael Semff (ed.): Pasolini and death. Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern-Ruit 2005, pp. 83-106, on Medea cf. Pp. 101–103 (publication accompanying the exhibition in the Pinakothek der Moderne, November 17, 2005– February 5, 2006). Pasolini himself also speaks in an interview that he “let them dream the crime” ( Der Traum des Centaur. 2002, p. 132).
  2. ↑ for the production details see: Deutsche Kinemathek : Pier Paolo Pasolini. Documents. 1994, p. 135 (based on: Pier Paolo Pasolini. Le regole di un'illusione. 1991, ed. Laura Betti and Michele Gulinucci for the Fondo Pier Paolo Pasolini , who has been in charge of the Pasolini archive since 1983; the archive started in 2003 the Cineteca di Bologna .) the information (situated next to two longer criticism extracts) to a large extent also in: Filmmuseum Berlin - German Cinematheque (ed). FilmHeft 9: locations, locations, travels. Production design + film. Berlin 2005, pp. 41–42.
  3. ↑ Medea at filmportal.de.
  4. ↑ Arianna Stassinopoulos: The Callas . Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1980, p. 334; see. also Barth David Schwartz: Pasolini Requiem . Pantheon Books, New York 1992, p. 563.
  5. ↑ Münchner Merkur : With Maria Callas in a barbaric world. (April 17, 1971).
  6. ^ A b Medea in the Lexicon of International FilmsTemplate: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used .
  7. ↑ Spila: Pasolini. 2002, p. 90.
  8. ^ Deutsche Kinemathek: Pier Paolo Pasolini. Documents. 1994, pp. 135, 111, 28.
  9. ↑ a b c Pasolini: The Centaur's Dream. 2002, p. 130.
  10. ↑ cf. Angela Oster: Modern Mythographies and the Crisis of Civilization. Pier Paolo Pasolini's Medea. 2006; Maurizio Viano: A certain realism: making use of Pasolini's film theory and practice. University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London 1993, pp. 236-249; Stephen Snyder: Pasolini. 1980.
  11. ↑ cf. Irene Stephan: Medea. Multimedia career of a mythological figure . Böhlau Verlag, Cologne 2006, p. 302 (Notes, footnote 15: Opere di Pier Paolo Pasolini: Sceneggiature. Rome 1991, p. 483).
  12. ↑ cf. Angela Oster: Modern Mythographies. 2006, footnote 38 and James George Frazer: The golden branch . Edition in one volume, Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1989, cf. Pp. 632-635 (Original edition: The Golden Bough. 1922).
  13. ↑ cf. for example the brief introduction by Alberto Moravia : The Poet and the Subproletariat. From the Italian by Anna Zaschke, in: Pasolini. Series Film 12. 1977, pp. 7-12.
  14. ↑ Pasolini: The Centaur's Dream. 2002, p. 132.
  15. ^ Enzo Siciliano : Pasolini. Life and work. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1985, ISBN 3-596-25643-7 , cf. Pp. 337-341 (original edition: Vita di Pasolini . Rizzoli, Milan 1978).
  16. ^ Wolfram Schütte : Annotated filmography: Medea. 1969. In: Pasolini. Film series 12. 1977, p. 166.
  17. ^ Enzo Siciliano: Pasolini. 1985, pp. 423-424. The Callas was suggested to Pasolini by its producer Rossellini.
  18. ↑ Kölnische Rundschau: The Callas has nothing to sing. Pasolini begins filming Medea. June 21, 1969.
  19. ↑ quoted from: Stassinopoulos: Die Callas. 1980, pp. 327-328.
  20. ↑ Schwartz: Pasolini Requiem. 1992, pp. 558-561.
  21. ↑ see: Deutsche Kinemathek: Pier Paolo Pasolini. Documents. 1994, p. 135, other sources speak of the music of the Japanese Nō theater , as well as of Tibetan and African music.
  22. ↑ on the synchronization and use of the sound in Pasolini's films cf. Pasolini: The Centaur's Dream. 2002, pp. 140–141 and Pier Paolo Pasolini: Pasolini on Pasolini: in conversation with Jon Halliday. From the English by Wolfgang Astelbauer, Folio Verlag, Vienna, Bozen 1995, ISBN 3-85256-021-7 , p. 50 (Original edition: Pasolini on Pasolini: Interviews with Oswald Stack [ pseudonym ]. Thames and Hudson, London 1969. Das Interview took place in spring 1968).
  23. ^ Peter Buchka: Medea and the Pasolini case. Süddeutsche Zeitung, October 3, 1971, complete reprint in: Deutsche Kinemathek: Pier Paolo Pasolini. Documents. 1994, pp. 140-142.
  24. ^ Newsweek , September 13, 1971.
  25. ↑ Interview in: Medee. Souvenirs d'un tournage. Film, 55 min. Realization: Nicolas Ripoche. Carlotta Films / Allerton Films 2004 (bonus material from the ARTHAUS Premium DVD Box from Medea ).
  26. ↑ Pier Paolo Pasolini: The Dream of the Centaur. 2002, pp. 65, 67.
  27. ↑ quoted from Pasolini. Series Film 12. 1977, pp. 73, 75. Pasolini often spontaneously picks up the camera himself and shoots alternative material, which is increasingly finding more space in the final montage . In the lights of the suburbs , Sergio Tramonti, the actor of Apsirto, reports how Pasolini spontaneously snatches the camera from his cameraman Guarneri during the filming of Medea in order to “'capture' 'a picture himself on the fly”. In the later films he often took over the camera assistant himself in order to intervene at any time or to be able to take over the camera (Faldini, Fofi (Ed.): Lichter der Vorstädte. 1986, pp. 136, 152, 154; see also Spila: Pasolini. 2002, p. 93).
  28. ↑ a b c Complete reprint in: Deutsche Kinemathek: Pier Paolo Pasolini. Documents. 1994.
  29. ^ The New York Times: Review: Medea (1970) (October 29, 1971), accessed January 1, 2010.
  30. ↑ Schwartz: Pasolini Requiem. 1992, p. 552 ff.
  31. ↑ Schwartz: Pasolini Requiem. 1992, p. 552.