After his quest to retrieve the fabled Golden Fleece, Jason returns to Greece with powerful sorceress Medea. However, when the king banishes her, it's only human that Medea plots her furious... Read allAfter his quest to retrieve the fabled Golden Fleece, Jason returns to Greece with powerful sorceress Medea. However, when the king banishes her, it's only human that Medea plots her furious revenge. Can they escape her wrath?After his quest to retrieve the fabled Golden Fleece, Jason returns to Greece with powerful sorceress Medea. However, when the king banishes her, it's only human that Medea plots her furious revenge. Can they escape her wrath?
- Awards
- 2 nominations
- Glauce
- (as Margareth Clementi)
- Wet-nurse
- (as Anna Maria Chio)
- Director
- Writers
- Pier Paolo Pasolini
- Euripides(uncredited)
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaFinal part of Pier Paolo Pasolini's "Mythical Cycle" also including Oedipus Rex (1967), Teorema (1968) and Pigsty (1969).
- GoofsWhen Jason speaks to the two centaurs, there is a mismatch in their shadows in the middle of the screen, indicating that the image is a composite.
- Quotes
King Kresus: You are a barbarian from a foreign land, different from us. We don't want you among us. It is impossible to see into the depths of one's soul.
- ConnectionsEdited into Catalogue of Ships (2008)
Another ten years went by before I watched it again and after the second viewing, found myself emotionally drained, my jaw on the floor with the realization that I'd just finished a film that alternately horrified, fascinated and astonished me.
Medea is a grim, violent, film, minimally processed which only adds to its gruesome, wild rawness. This is Pasolini's Medea, not Euripedes and it is not easy viewing. Its wild, African/Middle Eastern score with the nasal bleating of women's voices in near pre-historic sounding rhythmic chant adds further to the element of being "out there" this film produces: This is about as far away from popular cinema as one can get. Medea doesn't easily compare to films of any other style or genre; not even with some of Pasolini's other work. But, if you can succumb to its hypnotic, mesmerizing pace at once both frenetic and static - you will realize this is as about as close to a hallucinatory experience one can achieve without the use of an illegal substance. Granted, not everyone wants that experience.
As Medea, Callas is simply amazing. Oddly, when the film came out she was roundly criticized for not being able to transfer the magic she so naturally gave on stage to the big screen. I will strongly disagree. The more I watch this film (which is probably several times a year for well over a decade), the more amazed I am by her performance in it. Where I, too, had first been critical of her languid weirdness, I've grown to see her commitment to the role. I've come to be riveted to her painfully expressive mask as she completely inhabits this character who is, quite literally, capable of everything (yes - everything is the right word here).
Where I was once critical of the lighting, I've grown up to realize what Pasolini did; why he chose to film at the times of day he chose, and the resulting, fascinatingly brutal and surreal luminosity that bathes the entire film and the almost palpable sense of its visual texture. Stunning. The landscapes Pasolini chose to film in are as brutal and as vital as the characters of the tale. His near excision of all spoken text ( the screenplay is nearly dialogue free) brings us into a timeless, yet somehow ancient world where all is understood without the use of verbal communication. The savage, bloody rites of sacrifices for fertility and harvest initially seem barbarous then become somehow beautiful and fascinating. Then they make one cringe with the realization of how, not so long ago, this was us.
A remarkable, savage and beautiful film.
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Details
Box office
- Gross worldwide
- $689
- Runtime1 hour 58 minutes
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.85 : 1
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