[Pigpen] abounds in symbols so extravagant and so abstruse that they continually appear to be shifting ground and flouting interpretation. No doubt, a number of interpretations are intended, and there is also no doubt that they are meant to be on several different "levels." Considering the incessant affectations of the film, interpretation seems hardly worth the effort….

[However, a] viewer cannot help but be impressed by a sense of Pasolini's acuteness and the ambitions of his analyses. He sees European civilization as having learned little from the worst catastrophe it ever experienced. Instead of evolving to a higher plane of social development (Pasolini is a Communist), men cynically repeat themselves or rationalize their impotence. The moral vacuum created by this purgatory is Pasolini's justification for wrath. (p. 4)

In the film's modern drama all the characters are too facile and in the medieval, too alien…. The medieval story never...