“[TEOREMA] is bizarre, playful and mysterious, an absurdist Noh cinema with a dash of proto-Pythonesque surrealism... It is exhilaratingly, even gloriously experimental in a way that hasn't dated.” -Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
“[TEOREMA] has the power at some subterranean level to remain in your memory long after you think you've dismissed it.” - Roger Ebert
“A bonafide icon of ’60s world cinema.” -Trevor Johnston,Time Out
Wednesday, December 16, 8:15 p.m. | One of the iconoclastic Pier Paolo Pasolini’s most radical provocations finds the auteur moving beyond the poetic, proletarian earthiness that first won him renown and notoriety with a coolly cryptic exploration of bourgeois spiritual emptiness. Terence Stamp stars as the mysterious stranger—perhaps an angel, perhaps a devil—who, one by one, seduces the members of a wealthy Milanese family (including European cinema icons Silvana Mangano, Massimo Girotti, Laura Betti, and Anne Wiazemsky), precipitating an existential crisis in each of their lives. Unfolding nearly wordlessly in a procession of sacred and profane images, this tantalizing metaphysical riddle—blocked from exhibition by the Catholic Church for degeneracy—is at once a blistering Marxist treatise on sex, religion, and art and a primal scream into the void.
Awards & Nominations
1968 Venice Film Festival - Winner, Best Actress
SAIC Film Club | Ongoing Monthly Series
SAIC Film Club is a monthly series of compelling repertory films selected by SAIC students and open to the public. This fall’s films were programmed by Siskel Film Center student worker Sofia Roberts, who will also introduce each screening.
The Film Center is ADA accessible. This presentation will be projected without open captions. The theater is hearing-loop equipped. For accessibility requests, please email filmcenter@saic.edu