Pasolini, Maria Callas - Medea (1969) 05/12

So, we're about halfway through the film and, judging by the blog's traffic counter, I'm the only one enjoying it! Oh well. I might just post the rest of it at once and be done with it. But today I'm posting #5 out of 10 (11 and 12 are extra footage that I'm skipping).

I'm enjoying it anyway. I don't know if Pasolini has made it entirely clear why Medea is so enamored with Jason, but you'll see in this sequence that leaving with him- and betraying her people in the process- is a mixed blessing at best. As you'll see here, she's realizing that these men are much less religious than her own people.

Pasolini was a Marxist and sometimes I think people look too hard to see that in his films. But there might be a parallel here to be made with the west and the 'third world' versus Jason's people and Medea's. At any rate, some critics have drawn the comparison.

I'd just like to note the costume design in this section. Remember that these tribes are people who were long gone when Euripedes was writing, so all of this had to be created by the filmmakers.