A Filmmaker's Review: "Oedipus Rex" (1967)

I've watched a couple of movies by this director and really, I am very, very impressed by the innovation considering the costume, set up and even the scripting being on line with this cross between melodrama and psychological violence. It's like a modern Shakespearean script whilst holding on to the way in which Shakespeare creates tensions through language. The film is based on Sophocles' Theban Plays and specifically "Oedipus Rex". We all know the story of Oedipus who's mother Jocasta was told a prophecy by an oracle in which her child will murder his father and marry his mother. However, Jocasta's response is to get the servant to take the child and kill it. But he cannot do it so gives it to a servant of the opposing city who takes it back and gives it to the king and queen. He eventually grows up and finds her way back - only for the prophecy to begin to play out. It has horrifying consequences.

The way in which this film makes it different is the way in which it is structured. It starts off in the 1920s and then seems to move back to the beginning of the ancient Greek world only to return to the 20th century at the end of the film. It has a ton of meaning in which it shows that the shame that Oedipus feels is almost eternal because it has endured so many centuries and so many places. I love the way in which his injuries have healed but the attention he grabs by his injuries have not. He is blinded and as he walks around with Angelo, people look at him just as they used to and he may not be able to see them doing so, but it is sure as hell he can feel these eyes on him at all times.

Franco Citti portrays Oedipus. Honestly, I cannot fault the man, he is a brilliant actor who really focussed on the way in which Oedipus's anger against his false heritage grew and grew over time and then exploded in this psychological nervous breakdown taken out on his brother-in-law/uncle. I think that this progression was so important for the film because without it, we would not only not be able to see where Oedipus was psychologically but we also would not be able to tell how he felt about learning about said prophecy and encountering the "Sphinx" which, by then, he is already on slight edge. From there to the end of the film, Franco Citti makes sure we understand each stage of the breakdown.

Silvana Mangano portrays the most excellent Jocasta I have ever seen on the stage. Basically, if you read "Oedipus Rex" and you thought about what Jocasta might look and act like, it would be Silvana Mangano. She gives an almost naivety to Jocasta and yet, she was powerful and estranged from her people. She seemed to have this concealment, a terror she constantly lived with that was relative to the way in which she had thought about her child. However, when this is pushed over the edge, her emotions become very real - having been repressed for a very long time, she reacts violently.

The film is scripted brilliantly. At the beginning we have this carelessness in which the woman is in love and love is generally part of the lexis. However, just after the child is said to be dead, the script changes almost dramatically from being about love to almost exclusively being about death. When there is a very clear distinction between why the lexis changes in Thebes to why the lexis changes in Corinth - it changes in Thebes because of the child being killed whereas, it changes in Corinth because the child may have been abandoned. Yet the two of them seem to relate to the same situation - the child being left for dead. So without even knowing who Oedipus really is and without him having any voice of his own as he is still a baby - we already know the discourse that surrounds him. This discourse becomes more and more important as the story moves on but without that, we would not have been able to understand the story. So technically, it is the most important part of the film.