Pasolini is no austere modernist carving out a resolutely independent style but an artist whose principal stylistic device is pastiche. His films, like those of Jean-Luc Godard, are thus extremely heterogeneous and rely on the force of his personal involvement for their effective coherence. Despite the referential quality of his imagery and music, Pasolini's works bear the stamp of their author. (p. 55)

The basic polarity which gives tension to Pasolini's style and which, on the crudest level, can be expressed as the attempt to reconcile Freud and Marx, is very apparent if one compares … Theorem and Oedipus Rex. It is even more clearly expressed in Pigsty, which combines two episodes, the one modern and satiric, the other mythic and orgiastic. (pp. 55-6)

The Freudian element in Pasolini is most obvious in his own Oedipal situation, quite explicitly expressed in his version of the Sophoclean tragedy but implicit in...