Oedipus Rex

A man touches the face of a woman — "Oedipus Rex" (1967, dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini) Courtesy of Janus Films.

A man wearing a pagan headdress with sticks sticking out of the top. — "Oedipus Rex" (1967, dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini) Courtesy of Janus Films.

Join students and faculty of the Cornell Classics Department for a screening and discussion of Pier Paolo Pasolini's Edipo Re (1967), a retelling of Sophocles' Ancient Greek tragedy Oedipus the King (420s BCE).

Pasolini’s powerfully iconoclastic take on Sophocles’s immortal tragedy blends eras, cultures, and influences to create a searing exploration of fate, free will, and the things we fear most in ourselves. Largely shot amid the stark, elemental landscapes of the Moroccan desert and set in an indefinable ancient past, this bold reimagining casts the filmmaker’s frequent collaborator Franco Citti as the eponymous foundling, whose willful blindness to his own nature unleashes a cataclysmic reckoning. With a prologue and epilogue set in twentieth-century Italy, Pasolini connects the story to his own bourgeois upbringing, daring to turn his soul inside out and stare into the abyss.

Free admission. Sponsored by the Cornell Classics Department.

The evening will include discussion with Professor Athena Kirk (Classics), Professor Andrew Moisey (History of Art and Visual Studies), and students from the course "Initiation to Greek Culture" (CLASS 2603).

Oedipus Rex screens courtesy of Janus Films.