A mysterious, handsome stranger (Terence Stamp) arrives at the house of a Milanese factory owner and his well-to-do family and proceeds, over the next few days, to seduce each member of the household in turn. Just as suddenly and inexplicably – about halfway through Pasolini’s remarkable 1968 film – he departs, leaving the family members to deal with the explosive effect he has had on their lives. Their reactions differ wildly; the father strips naked at a railway station and decides to hand his factory over to the workers; the mother plunges into random sexual encounters; the son becomes an artist; the daughter goes into a catatonic state; the maid returns to her village, starts eating nettles and levitating, and becomes a kind of saint.


Elegantly composed and shot, brimming over with rich, if ambiguous, symbolism and expressing the director’s fascination with the various ways in which class, sexuality, politics and religion intersect, Theorem is one of Pasolini’s greatest and most accessible films.