Teorema - geometry of love

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Movie
German title Teorema - geometry of love
Original title Teorema
Country of production Italy
original language Italian
Publishing year 1968
length 98 minutes
Rod
Director Pier Paolo Pasolini
production Franco Rossellini
Manolo Bolognini
music Ennio Morricone
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Ted Curson
camera Giuseppe Ruzzolini
cut Nino Baragli
occupation

Teorema - Geometry of Love is a feature film by the Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini from 1968.

action

The first scene of the film shows a group of men in Milan who are being filmed and discussing the consequences for capitalism of donating an industrial company to its workers. A postman leaves a telegram at the door of the villa of an upper-class industrial family in which the arrival of a guest is announced for the next day. The guest is a good-looking and reserved young man reading Arthur Rimbaud and moves at ease throughout. One by one, all family members succumb to his fascination: the housekeeper Emilia, the son Pietro, the mother Lucia, the daughter Odetta and finally the father. The guest has sexual intercourse with all of them and marks a turning point in their lives. After his sudden departure, he leaves behind emptiness and emotional chaos, which mother, father, daughter and son try to compensate in various and sometimes absurd ways. Emilia returns to her family in the country, where she becomes a withdrawn but nevertheless much-visited saint and faith healer. Young Odetta goes insane and ends up in a madhouse. Pietro starts with abstract painting and develops conceptual thoughts about painting and artistic technique. The previously always moral wife takes up sexual contact with strange young men and the father leaves his factory to the workers, undresses at the main station in Milan and goes alone and naked into the desert.

background

The theorem that occurs in the film title is the one that says that we must respond to the problems of the world and their own existential needs with a formalist geometry, specifically with philistine behavior . Such a society, according to Pasolini, cannot be real. An event outside of the norm, such as the visit of the unknown guest, is enough to reveal the void. The residents of the house begin to deal with themselves and get out of the norm themselves. So in the film the theorem is broken down.

Reviews

"With its fully intended, extreme abstractness and symbolism, Teorema creates an inaccessibility, despite the expressive actors and precise composition, which can only be broken up after a more detailed examination of the author and the contemporary, subjective perception of his surroundings."

- Andreas R. Becker, Filmstarts.de

“Ambiguous film, open to various interpretations, in which Pasolini formulates the knowledge he has drawn from Christianity and Marxism for the necessity of a spiritual and social transformation of man. The artistically remarkable film briefly links socialism, capitalism, religiosity and sexuality and condenses into a parable that is difficult to decipher, based on allegorical figure and image arrangements. "

Prices

Coppa Volpi to Laura Betti for best female actress and Premio OCIC at the XXIX. Venice International Film Festival .

Adaptations

The Italian composer Giorgio Battistelli wrote the opera Teorema for the Munich Biennale in 1992 on behalf of Hans Werner Henze, based on motifs from Pasolini's film. The music drama for six actors, small orchestra, synthesizer and the oriental drums Daf and Zarb completely dispenses with singing and is only occasionally commented on by a narrator, similar to the film.

The Belgian director Ivo van Hove staged Teorema as a play at the Ruhrtriennale 2009.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Andreas R. Becker: Teorema - Geometry of Love. Criticism on filmstarts.de.
  2. Teorema - Geometry of Love. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed July 9, 2019 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  3. ^ Giorgio Battistelli: Teorema. Musical parable. Archive of the Munich Biennale 1992.
  4. Max Nyffeler: Giorgio Battistelli's Polyphony of Realities. Artist portrait at Beckmesser.de, 2006, accessed on June 28, 2015.
  5. Teorema. Archive of the Ruhrtriennale 2009.