[Edipo Re (Oedipus Rex) is a series of events], one following upon the other, unprepared, unexploited for their story values, in many ways even unexplained, but merely allowed to explode before us in their beauty, their mystery, their terror. And this is the magic of Pasolini's cinema, a cinema of frontal assault.

We are not asked to believe a story, we are simply buffeted by emotion. But not only by emotion, for in a Pasolini film ideas and reactions are clearly spelled out for us, and there's always question of a certain aesthetic and intellectual distance. Our reaction is one of enthralment, but of insight as well. Intellect and emotions are appealed to directly and personally, and we feel involved at the most profound level.

For Pasolini structures his film so as to capture man in those moments and situations completely beyond pretence and convention. Edipo Re is...