Medea (1969) [The Criterion Collection]

Director: Pier Paolo Pasolini
Writers: Pier Paolo Pasolini, Euripides
Stars: Maria Callas, Massimo Girotti, Laurent Terzieff

In this hypnotic adaptation of Euripides’s immortal tragedy, Pier Paolo Pasolini casts opera diva Maria Callas (utterly arresting in her only film role) as the sorceress of Greek legend, whose separation from her homeland of Colchis and betrayal by her lover, Jason, lead her down a path of shocking vengeance. Melding Western myth with aesthetic and musical influences from numerous world cultures, Pasolini fashions a mesmerizing cinematic pageant that gathers in force until it explodes in rage and a stunningly nihilistic condemnation of injustice.

Extras:
- New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- On-set Memories, a 2004 documentary on the making of Medea, with rare behind-the-scenes footage
- Interview with actor Maria Callas from 1969 on the French television program Pour le cinéma
- Original theatrical trailer




Pasolini 101:
One of the most original and controversial thinkers of the twentieth century, Italian polymath Pier Paolo Pasolini embodied a multitude of often seemingly contradictory ideologies and identities—and he expressed them all in his provocative, lyrical, and indelible films. Relentlessly concerned with society’s downtrodden and marginalized, he elevated pimps, hustlers, sex workers, and vagabonds to the realm of saints, while depicting actual saints with a radical earthiness. Traversing the sacred and the profane, the ancient and the modern, the mythic and the personal, the nine uncompromising, often scandal-inciting features he made in the 1960s still stand—on this, the 101st anniversary of his birth—as a monument to his daring vision of cinema as a form of resistance.