User reviews

Being familiar with the story and Maria Callas, on the opera stage unrivalled as a singing-actress, were my main interests into watching Medea, having never seen a Passolini film before. I didn't love it, however I also didn't hate it, though I can see perfectly both viewpoints. I don't think Medea is a flawless film, some of the anachronisms did go over my head, the film due to some sluggish pacing can get dull at times, the centaur's monologue- though much of Medea is dialogue-free- goes on forever and gets tedious quickly and the way Jason's role is written and performed is too simplistic and rather amateurish. However, I did think it looked great, the locations are really unique and beautiful to look at and the cinematography gives a grim and surreal feel that actually suits the story. You can definitely sense that there is a sense of time and phrase, and it is quite clear here. The music is also incredible, it draws you right in, is very bold in orchestration and captures the atmosphere of the drama superbly. Passolini directs very assuredly on the whole, some scenes are evocatively savage and if there are any highlights they are Medea's mesmerising entrance and the genuinely frightening climax. The centaur is beautifully played, looking imposing and the relationship between him and Jason is the most convincing of the relationships between the characters. The main merit of Medea is Maria Callas' titular role performance, like she did on the opera stage with an intelligent, sensual and quite menacing presence she completely dominates every scene she appears in and is incredibly magnetic. Overall, more a film I appreciate but worth watching for Callas, the visuals and the score. 6/10 Bethany Cox

This version of Medea, overall quite excellent, captures interesting aspects of the original piece. Familiarity with the story is necessary, though, and Passolini's story picks up a bit earlier than Euripides'. He runs through a stream of largely non-verbal sequences that establish a strong sense of place and emotional element that carry through the film. Classicists will enjoy the visual presentation of Iolkis, Chalkis, and their inhabitants -- though I still find it puzzling why the Argo is presented as little more than a raft; perhaps the budget was squandered on making a believable Centaur. Nonetheless, this film captures the mystical, religious, and passionate elements of Euripides' vision, and is highly recommended.

"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned" describes Medea, whose hubris and amour fou for the bold and beautiful Jason leads to her downfall. Revered as a goddess by her own people, she betrays her own divinity and her race when she aids him to steal the sacred fleece, killing her own god-brother by decapitation during their escape. After bearing two sons to Jason in Greece, Medea is still not accepted and fails to adjust to Greek culture. The affection of acclaimed hero Jason strays and his ambition culminates in a betrothal to King Kreon's daughter. But when Medea learns of this betrayal and negation of her love and sacrifice her fury knows no bounds. She summons up the dark forces within her (she is a barbarian sorceress after all) for vengeance against those who have wronged her by killing Jason's sons, welcoming him with a false semblance of conciliation and acceptance while serving his dead sons to him for dinner. She sends two magnificent marriage cloaks to the king and his daughter who, when they don them, burst into flames. She then departs in rage leaving Jason to live with the results of the infamy he caused her enact through destroying her life. Maria Callas, in her only film, shows the famous range and subtlety she enjoyed as an opera star. Her fierce control and rage are memorable. Although this was a low budget film, it is extremely evocative and leaves lasting impressions. The sequence in the beginning when Jason was being tutored by the centaur Chiron about his destiny was very effective, and marked the innovative trick-photographic technique of melding man to horse to make it look very real and convincing. The primitive settings and human sacrifice of Medea's people helped to establish her dark, powerful and exotic barbarian character. English subtitles helped make up for the unfortunate dubbing. A strange and powerful version which holds it own against other interpretations.

I first saw Medea in college and was highly critical of it, finding it disappointing on almost all counts: terrible sound editing, cheap film stock, over bright lighting, bizarre, amateurish acting styles, inadequately edited, etc. Then there was the extended murder scene of Glauce and Creon going seemingly on forever, and then . . . wait; what's this? It's repeated all over again? Did someone get the wrong reel into the house?

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.

Medea is an extraordinary film which some will find difficult. Telling the story of Jason and his quest for the Golden Fleece, this is not the stuff of Ray Harryhausen. Meeting the priestess of the Fleece, Medea, he falls in love with her and takes her home. Years later, after bearing him sons, she exacts a terrible revenge after he spurns her for a new love. Medea is also extraordinary in exhibiting Pasolini's demonstration of contrasts in plot development and framing. In the sequence in which we are introduced to Medea, we witness the mesmeric nature of a human sacrifice, which changes from the ecstatic to the horrific within the same sequence. This motif recurs throughout the film, and has prompted admiration from French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, who mentions Pasolini in his treatise on the movement-image. Filmed with a mixture of professional and non-professional actors, Medea is a challenging and refreshing change from the usual, as it builds up to a frightening climax in an unconventional way. Often shown in 'World Cinema' slots late at night, it's a film worth staying up for, or recording, for those seeking an alternative to Hollywood pap.

I love Pasolini, and Medea is easily the weakest of his works that I've seen. After having made the brilliant adaptation of the Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex, Medea seems rather uninspired. It retains most of Pasolini's beautiful settings, but the script is a poor adaptation of Euripides' play. The film's as slow as they come, and to me it seemed like a way to cover up the lack of ideas. Maria Callas is excellent as Medea, but she really doesn't have that much screen time, if you measure it. Most of the film is made up of people performing weird rituals, and the characters of Jason and Medea don't do all that much. I don't like Pasolini's interpretation of Jason as a chauvanist, egotistical jerk. It's too simplistic, and it's unfair moralizing from a modern vantage point. The character has much more depth in the various myths, even in Euripides' play. Medea's depth is sapped, as well, and her motivation in the film is sketchy at best. And then there are a couple of confusing ellipses, especially an extended fantasy sequence (apparently) where Medea imagines killing Glauce and Creon, followed by the reality. It feels more like there were two versions of this section, and the editor screwed up and left both in. Pasolini's direction is often amazing, as is the cinematography and music. I didn't hate Medea, but I can't muster any enthusiasm for it. 6/10.

Film is barely a 100 years old, and strolls far behind Literature, which exists and shines for some 5000 years, and can't light a foot candle to music, which is probably a million years old...

But, film is catching up, although the cannonball race that modern society is nowadays does more damage then good. 'Medea' is the prove that film can, or might, be art. In a gallant way.

Pasolini's MEDEA deserves, on a scale from 1 to 10, a 1001.

This film, even if the viewer MIGHT not be completely satisfied after watching this picture (rumour has it that there actually are 4 to 6 of them somewhere on our planet), will linger on in the mind forever. Gorgeous shots will come back over and over again, the enigmatic yet beautiful soundtrack combined with the breathtaking locations will prove to be unforgettable !

Pasolini of course was a very wise man and leader, otherwise it is impossible one can surround himself with so much talent and craft. Having cinematographer Guarnieri, designer Ferretti and costume designer Tosi in your team means one knows that only the best were good enough.

There are others though, the nameless of the production team must have done an impossible good job to get this movie shot in those sensational but extremely difficult places.

And then of course, there is Callas.

No no, you Filistines, La Divina is not singing here. Callas already ended her career as unparalleled Opera Diva when she shot this movie. She did use her bottomless brown eyes and enormous presence for MEDEA though.

Many claim that MATTHEW'S PASSION is the ultimate PASOLINI Movie. They might be right; that one is as beautiful and as haunting as MEDEA.

But MEDEA has the truly unique locations.

And can boast that it has Maria Callas in her only movie-role...

It's a shame that this movie will most likely attract an audience that looks it up for the novelty-value of seeing La Divina Callas 'play' at movie-actress. I would almost wish she never got famous so that people could get bowled over by what must be one of the best unsung performances ever in movie-history (rather than a new trick for an old pony). Just as in the theater, every single gesture, every word is carefully measured for all its worth before being made or spoken. She seems to create the role as the movie proceeds, diverting attention away from the sometimes painfully low production values and the hesitant acting of the first-timers. Add to this one of Pasolini's most assuredly directed films, and stunning scenery (the locations indicated by the original play), and it seems as though you had never even heard about the play (let alone seen or read it). That's how fresh this movie comes across a couple of decades later.

Get over that fear of foreign language and subtitles and enjoy!!

This movie has to be one of the worst movies I have ever seen. Some people i guess would call it excellent for its "artsiness"... but as far as i could tell it was poorly filmed, poorly edited, terribly dubbed and poorly acted. It just didn't find any redeaming factors about it... other then the two main actors who play Jason and Medea made no other movies. Terrible.

And not the Ed Wood kind. Rather, the pretentious, useless, incoherent, utterly boring European kind. Knock yourself out, if you like movies with a glacial pace, precious little plot, cryptic dialogue, idiotic costumes, and camera work worthy of (maybe) a high school project. The director has a penchant for extended shots of actors' faces, and for useless, lingering long shots. The music, if you could call it that, will make you envy the deaf. Possibly good for insomnia. Possibly good for making you vow to never watch a Pasolini film again. It took me a couple of tries to get through this turkey. Seriously, this isn't even mediocre story telling. Watching paint dry is more entertaining. As to the story, it is supposed to be a tragedy, but I think you could write the plot on the back of a stamp - amazingly, Pasolia thins out this gruel to a whole 118 minutes.

I recommend this to any adventurous viewer, but on conditions.

Viewers who generally favor the clean, painterly versions of myth will find this amateurish, too slow and too cryptic in its ritual. A few even seem to believe that the repetition of the murder of Glauce and Creon is there by an editing mistake, imagine! But that's how sloppy it seems.

Viewers who want the cutting conflict of the original play, will also be disappointed. There is a bit of conventional Medea in the latter stages of the film, but most of it is filmed in hugely elliptical swathes, so the concrete despair and drama all but evaporate in the air.

It is a marvelously flawed piece to be sure, an appealing quality to me; that is not the same as being sloppy as a result of ignorance, on the contrary it shows an openness to imperfection, adventure and discovery. And this is a film about all three in how we watch this myth, but in what way?

Let's see.

A significant point behind the exercise, revealed in the opening scene where the centaur lectures a young Jason on the purpose of myth, is that we have forgotten what is vital in the stories we tell, the rituals we enact. Scholarly talk of ritual dance or meditation is as removed from the purpose of either as can be, obvious enough. This is certainly true of so many Hollywood films (and Cinecitta of course), and not just of the mythical or quasi- historical variety. Oh they may excite within narrow limits of the action, but..

So many are filmed in the same way as everything else, they do not transport us, which for me is a prerequisite of every film but particularly mythic narrative. The dresses and headgear change from the norm, but the world and drama conform to a trite familiarity of other films. Though it takes place in strange, different times, a film like Ben Hur is filmed as static affirmation of visual and narrative norms; never more apparent than in the scenes with Jesus, presenting the passions in a stagy, painterly way we associate as real because the same images have been repeated for so long—say, the Crucifixion. Even Scorsese fell foul of this in both his Jesus and Buddhist films.

So instead of giving us a vital presence in that world that will awaken a direct curiosity to know, they make us a dull spectator from a safe distance. We duly admire the perfection of the art and platitude of the lessons, the exact opposite of the nature of that story in particular, and spiritual insight in general. We see the mundaneness of the sacred, and not the opposite which is the spiritual essence—if we can't see transience in the traffic of Saturday night party-goers and can only read it from a Zen book, we've wasted our time.

It seems this was in part why Pasolini undertook his Gospel film in the first place, show a world we know from fixed images with a real gravity that will invigorate a sense of intense, spiritual curiosity—the storylessons were the same, what changed was the air around the story.

This is carried here. The point is that myth (by extension: the narrative and cinematic ritual) can only matter, be truly ecstatic, when it is really 'real' (not the same as realistic), which is to say something can only be vital when it escapes the routine of mind, and becomes 'alive' in the moment of watching. This is at the heart of the philosophical mind problem: structure does not begin to account for experience.

So this is what we have here. All the effort goes to loosening up our sense of 'realistic' routine reality; the music is a mixture of Buddhist throat chanting, Japanese shamisen, Amerindian ululation, African tribal drums; the dresses and gear a mixture of Slavic, Maghrebi, Greco-Roman origins. At this point, you'll either think of it nonsensical or begin your immersion beyond sense.

The point is that this is a hazy world a little outside maps and time, undefined yet. But within this world, Pasolini creates an experience of intense 'being there'—in his camera, in his chosen places and fabrics, in the textures of light, it feels like we are present. Oh it is still an abstract ritual, but one that has sense, and that sense is carried entirely in the air of the film, not in any spoken conflict.

Further within the ritual, we have Medea's own magical timeflow of conflicting urges and dreams, channeled by Callas channeling her own anxieties with fame and husband, inseparable from all else. Her presence is so intense, it may be creating imaginary madness in a key scene—this seems to be why we see the burning Glauce in the dream but not out of it.

The bit with the centaur may be silly, but that is Pasolini telling us a bit about the film he's made. The rest is so, so wonderfully conceived. The opening with the boy touching the sacredness of nature in every small thing is like out of Malick, 25 years before. During this time, Pasolini was perhaps the only one (with Parajanov) who could rival Tarkovsky in his cinematic flow.

Incredibly abstruse visualisation of the myth, allowing Pasolini to explore the conflict - a psychological and social conflict - between an older order of magic and the new order of reason and "civilisation". Jason needs Medea, repository of occult knowledge and superstitious practise, to help establish his rule; when he gets there, she is side-lined, and takes a terrible revenge. The storytelling here is oblique and elliptical, full of gorgeous images, sensual locations and sounds the like of which human ears rarely get to hear, full of ululations and Dionysian frenzy.

The most intriguing segments involve Jason's relationship with his mentor, the centaur, who appeared in his childhood as a horse-man and his adulthood in normal human form, but the horse-form remains as a mythic trace once childhood is departed.

The athlete Pasolini casts as Jason does well, physically scrumptious as he is and with the requisite banal arrogance; the casting of Maria Callas as Medea is more problematic - she's so obviously the product of the higher echelons of civilised culture that it is impossible to see her as a primitive force - her presence threatens to turn the film into a jaded millionairess' arty home movie. Still, if you try to ignore her patrician features and over-indulgent false-eyelashes, there's plenty of Pasolinian delights on display, and hardly anything in the film you would be able to see in anyone else's version of cinema.

To win the kingdom his uncle took from his father, Jason must steal the golden fleece from the land of barbarians...

When the film opened up and we had the glimpse of a filthy centaur, I was pretty much sold that this film was going to be good, or at least unforgettable. The remainder may not have had as much magic, but it did not disappoint in originality... and cannibalism.

Typically when I think of Italian mythology films, I think of the "sword and sandal" films. This is not one of those. Rather than make the story all romantic and flashy, we get a world that is probably much closer to reality. Assuming that the event told in myth are many, many years BCE, it makes sense to show a much more primitive world than we expect. And in that sense, this film does not disappoint.

There's something about this adaptation of Euripides' Medea that feels just so much slower than the rest of Pasolini's filmography. Things had been slowing down for the last few entries in his filmography, but those slowed paces, especially in Teorema, had been in service to quirkier, weirder stories that still managed to get in and out in less than one hundred minutes. Going nearly a full two hours for this telling of Medea feels overindulgent to the point where it simply feels like the film stops being entertaining on its own. Pasolini isn't doing anything particularly inventive stylistically that he hadn't handled before, but this film is a much more traditional narrative than he's handled in a few years which seems to clash with the glacial pace.

Jason (Giuseppe Gentile) is raised by Chiron (Laurent Terzieff), a centaur (sometimes), and told that his uncle Pelias (Paul Jabara) has stolen his rightful throne of Iolcus, sending him to Colchis to retrieve the golden fleece as payment for giving up his throne back to Jason. Colchis is a barbarous land where prisoners are crucified before being dismembered and fed to the people. It is also where Queen Medea (Maria Callas) lives, kept in chains. When she's given a vision of Jason coming for the fleece, she steals it herself, bringing her brother along, gives the fleece to Jason, and kills her brother when he figures out what's going on. Jason is her savior from her life in Colchis, and he marries her after he casts the fleece to Pelias' feet. He bears him two children, and he decides that he's gonna marry Glauce (Margareth Clementi).

Now, why did Pasolini decide to tell this story? Well, I think it feeds his general hatred of almost everything. The barbarous tribe at Colchis are terrible. Jason, a paragon of Greek virtue, ends up terrible. The primal existence is dangerous and terrible. The more modern Greek existence is dangerous and terrible. Despite the awful portrait of both, it's the primitive Colchis society that ends up feeling more just than the Greek, especially since the ancient gods of Colchis end up siding with Medea in her conflict with Jason. It's about the powerful using their power to get what they want at the expense of the powerless, and the powerless rising up in revolution, in Medea's own small but terrible way, to fight it. It fits his filmography rather nicely from a thematic point of view.

My issue, as I stated before, is that it's painfully slow. I don't see why this film needs to be almost two-hours long. I think twenty minutes could have been snipped at throughout the film, bringing it to about ninety minutes, helping it move faster. I suspect part of the issue is that there are long stretches without much dialogue, especially near the beginning with the introduction of Medea and her life in Colchis. Who she is, her relations to other people around her, and the actual series of events around Jason are so opaque while Pasolini takes so much time to lay it out at the same time. Pasolini proved that he could be really good with wordless passages in his films, in particular the opening to Oedipus Rex, but the extended sections in Medea feel less immediate and more ambling than some of Pasolini's previous efforts at similarly delivered material.

The meat of the film is, much like Pasolini's adaptation of Oedipus Rex, in the back half of the film, the part that actually adapted the Greek play by Euripides. It's also the talkier side of things in general (excluding the scenes with Chiron who is a stream of background information to start the film), and it's where Callas has her time to shine as the eponymous character. She emotes well, Pasolini using the opera star in her film debut effectively while filming her lovingly as her world comes crashing down around her while her husband abandons her for a young woman who will bring him great wealth. Her descent into madness, including the burning of her own children , is a bit confusing (it seems like she has a vision of giving a poisoned gown to Glauce that ends in flames that gets moved on from, with the events largely replaying without the flaming gown, though I'm honestly not sure if it actually happens and people are just happy that Medea is giving another gift to Glauce, which would make no sense and calls into question the effort to spend so much time on a mere vision which has a first half that largely plays out the same way minutes later, another example of this film just dragging).

The apocalyptic vision of Medea lording over Jason as she gets consumed with flames is great, though.

So, I'm mixed. Pasolini once again proves that he can capture great images with his camera. The story of Medea is reasonably well told, though it just drags and underexplains, especially in the beginning. The performances are very good, especially Callas, though I want to single out the only real non-professional actor in the whole thing, Giuseppe Gentile, who was an Olympic athlete that Pasolini felt just fit the Jason role and comes across very well in his performance.

I think I slightly prefer Pigsty for its arch approach to its broad point, but Medea is largely serviceable even if I feel like it misses the mark slightly. Seriously, twenty minutes or so on the cutting room floor, and I think Pasolini has a well assembled retelling of the ancient story. At this length, though? It just doesn't quite do what it needs to.

This is unfortunately the only movie picture played by Maria Callas; you can see, on the contrary, how moving and strong her playing is, also without singing. Her eyes do express the weakness and the sad power of the neglected sorceress. Pasolini's visual and musical work about the myth – its ambiguity, its deep powers – creates the background in which Maria Callas realizes her masterpiece of acting. Also the strange Italian accent of Callas doesn't annoy, but suits perfectly to the foreigner Medea. The location of the film is peculiar: for example the old Corinthium is set at the Piazza of Miracoli in Pisa.

As with Oedipus Rex two years earlier, Pasolini takes a nearly 2500 year old Greek play, this one from Euripides, and creates a visually stunning modern re-telling. The cinematography in Turkey and Syria is absolutely gorgeous, and Pasolini's world-building which blends together cultures and rituals makes the mythological tale feel alive and natural. The sound design is blaring in places but it's artistic and certainly never boring, meanwhile the costuming, with the exception of a rather cheesy centaur outfit, is first-rate. Also amazing is opera singer Maria Callas in the title role, who channels intensity with her gaze and the heartfelt ache of a women scorned very well.

What kept me from loving the film was that Pasolini's story-telling was a little too cryptic for me here. He uses a minimum amount of dialogue especially in the first half which I guess you could say respects the viewer's intelligence, but I thought things would have flowed better had he devoted a little time to filling in some of the narrative cracks, instead of (for example) the extended sequences of religious rites. The final half hour or so also lagged until its gruesome ending, including fantasy sequences which didn't seem to add much, and strangely excluding the exit on a divine chariot. A little disappointing really, but you can't deny the beauty of this film, and I appreciated the homage to classic mythology.

There are several directors that make "arty" films that are certainly not for everyone. Pasolini has also done films which can be more easily acceptable by wider audiences; yet this is not one of them. This is one of those films that can and will be liked by only a few people. Others will turn their head the other way or simply hate it...

Well I like weird art & films, I like Pasolini, and I liked Medea in various interesting aspects. I suppose one should at least know the basics of Euripedes story to comprehend the story - Pasolini doesn't focus in the story so much, important facts are assumed by the viewer and the dialogues are scarce within the film. No narration exists.

I think Pasolini here was more interested in presenting the cultural / ethnological / theological / religious stigma of the era - his usual interest on god and religion is also here, despite text is given few opportunities to breed context in this film. We have also the theme of ancient world VS the new world of logic and the new gods. This is one of the films, like, say, Hertzog's films, that are up to the viewer to comprehend, or a film critics would call a symbolic one. Needless to say one has to like to think while watching this one, not be spoon-fed.

Last but not least, the soundtrack enhances this strongly visual experience a lot. A set of strange but intense folk/ethnic/avant guard/experimental songs make the viewing a unique experience for those who like 'hard' films....