Teorema (DVD)

One of the iconoclastic Pier Paolo Pasolinis most radical provocations, Teorema 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 strangerperhaps an angel, perhaps a devilwho, 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 riddleblocked from exhibition by the Catholic Church for degeneracyis at once a blistering Marxist treatise on sex, religion, and art and a primal scream into the void.