Teorema. 1968. Italy. Written and directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini. With Terence Stamp, Silvana Mangano, Laura Betti, Massimo Girotti, Anne Wiazemsky. In Italian; English subtitles. 35mm. 98 min.
A frequent collaborator with Pasolini, Ennio Morricone composed a hellishly discordant score for the filmmaker’s scandalously “obscene” classic about a stranger who sexually and psychologically seduces a bourgeois Milanese family, evoking their spiritual bankruptcy through dissonant musical motifs for string, harpsichord, and chorus interwoven with jarringly groovy ’60s pop and even Mozart’s Requiem. The film is constructed as a kind of metaphysical nightmare, privileging music, sound, and gesture over spoken language.