Oedipus Rex

Oedipus Rex (Edipo re) is a 1967 Italian film directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Pasolini adapted the screenplay from the Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex written by Sophocles in 428 BC. The film was mainly shot in Morocco. It was presented in competition at the 28th Venice International Film Festival. It was Pasolini's first feature-length color film, but followed his use of color in "The Earth Seen from the Moon" episode in the portmanteau film The Witches (1967). Plot A son is born to a young couple in pre-war Italy. The child opens his eyes for the first time to see his loving mother and suckles on her breast. The father is motivated by jealousy, and believes the child will take away the love of his wife and send him back into the void. The soldier takes the baby into the desert to be abandoned, at which point the film's setting changes to the ancient world of Greece. The child is rescued and taken to the King of Corinth Polybus and Queen Merope of Corinth and raised as their own son because they are infertile. The child is given the name Oedipus. Oedipus (Franco Citti) grows up believing that he is the biological son of Polybus and Merope. One day while cheating at a sports game an angry classmate calls him a foundling which enrages him. This torments and confuses him on the inside and plagues him with bad dreams and a feeling of ill omen. He asks his parents to visit the Oracle of Delphi in order to find out the opinions of the god Apollo. He travels to the Oracle alone. The Oracle tells him that his fate is to kill his father and make love to his mother. She laughs at him and tells him to begone and to not curse people with his presence. Oedipus runs away from the Oracle in anger. He decides he can't return to Corinth and wanders aimlessly in the desert. As he is walking down the sacred road of Apollo he is stopped by a wagon and some armed soldiers. The king named Laius who is riding on the wagon orders Oedipus to leave and treats him as a beggar. Oedipus hurls a huge stone breaking the legs of one of the soldiers. He runs off to the desert where he faces each soldier one by one and kills them before returning to the wagon where he kills king Laius and the wounded soldier. One of the king's escorts runs off to the desert to avoid being killed and survives. Oedipus continues down the road where he comes across roving bands of displaced people fleeing the Sphinx. The Sphinx has terrorized the country of Thebes.