Theorem

Pasolini’s classic about a handsome, enigmatic stranger (Terence Stamp) who arrives at a bourgeois household and seduces an entire family.

A handsome, enigmatic stranger (Terence Stamp) arrives at a bourgeois household in Milan and successively seduces the son, the mother, the daughter and the father, not forgetting the maid. Then, as abruptly and mysteriously as he arrived, he departs.

In this cool, richly complex and provocative political allegory, director Pier Paolo Pasolini uses his schematic plot to explore family dynamics, the intersection of class and sex, and the nature of different sexualities. After winning a prize at the Venice Festival, Theorem was subsequently banned on an obscenity charge, but Pasolini later won an acquittal on grounds of the film's ‘high artistic value’. A visually ravishing film, with superb performances from all the cast, it also has a brilliantly eclectic soundtrack - with music ranging from Mozart and Morricone to the natural sound of chirping birds.