Influenced not only by his own attachment to pre-industrial peasant cultures but also by readings in anthropologists Mircea Eliade and James George Frazer, Pasolini' transform Euripides' classical story into a drama concerning a clash between two cultures with diametrically opposed views of reality, a clash having more relevance to philosophical and religious problems than to traditional Marxist theories of class conflict.

Medea, played brilliantly by Maria Callas in her first cinematic role, represents the archaic, clerical, and hierarchical universe of human prehistory, a stage of civilization typical of pre-industrial peasant cultures still found, according to Pasolini, in the Third World. Working by analogy, Pasolini sets the ancient mythical kingdom of Colchis in remote portions of Syria and Turkey. Jason (Giuseppe Gentile), on the other hand embodies an entirely different perspective, the rational, anti-mythical and pragmatic universe of the technician.

As Pasolini states, Medea could easily be the story of a Third World people and its disastrous encounter with materialist Western civilization, while Jason's inability to understand such a pre-industrial culture markes him as part of the modern world we all inhabit. Thus, Corinth is shown as the famous courtyard of Pisa's Cathedral, a symbol of the triumph of reason over myth brought about by the middle-class culture of the Italian Renaissance.

The most impressive sequences in Pasolini's Medea present dramatic imagery reflecting this clash of two worlds, barbarism and civilization. Jason's blindness to myth is clear from the opening sequence with his tutor, the Centaur: the half-man half-beast explains to the young child that "all is holy, wherever you look, there is a god; when nature seems natural, that is the end; everything is holy."

In successive film cuts, Jason grows to manhood, and the Centaur (Laurent Terzieff) is transformed into a mere man, symbolizing the drastic diminution of Jason's mythic consciousness. Later, after Jason steals the fleece, both Centaurs appear - the mythical Centaur remains silent (since its message is n longer comprehended by the rational Jason), as the completely human Centaur must explain its sentiments. Yet, mythical consciousness is not totally obliterated by its rational counterpart, Pasolini believes, and the heritage of modern man's origins in pre-industrial mythical culture is never really totally destroyed in the human psyche, as the mute presence of the original Centaur implies.

The lesson of the Centaur leads to Pasolini's brilliant evocation of mythical culture on Colchis: peasants gather for a human sacrifice that is part of a fertility cult of prehistorical origins, the victim's blood being employed to fertilize the wheat fields.

Pasolini directing the human sacrifice scene in Medea.

This visual rendering of the kind of ritual found minutely described in any good anthropological textbook then shifts to the dramatic clash between the rational Greek invaders and the relatively defenseless peasants. Jason and his men overwhelm their opponents by their superior technology in much the same manner the Spanish Conquistadores destroyed Indian civilizations in South America.

When Medea betrays her origins and flees with Jason and the fleece, she discovers that outside the mythical realm of Colchis, she has no roots, no identity ("Speak to me, Earth, I no longer remember your voice, speak to me, Sun!"). According to Pasolini, Medea thus finds herself in the same position as contemporary humanity: without a sense of identity provided by ancient myths, Medea exists without a soul and is alienated, separated from the beneficial power of illusion.

Callas as Medea - lost in a new world
she cannot comprehend.

When Jason returns with the fleece, he is curiously uninterested in it; he tells King Pelias, who holds the kingdom that is rightfully his, that the goatskin no longer possesses any power, and the sequence undermines Pasolini's belief that the loss of myth entails a loss of human potential. Jason sets aside his claim to the kingdom of Pelias and proceeds to Corinth/Pisa.

Pasolini then returns to Euripides and the concluding revenge of Medea. Now, however, Medea's vendetta reflects her reacquisition of her mythical powers of sorcery, and they triumph over the facile rationalism of Jason and Corinth. Pasolini shows us this revenge in a novel manner, providing the viewer with two narratives of the deaths of Glauce (Magareth Clementi) and Creon (Massimo Girotti): the first embodies a subjective dream Medea experiences, while the second scene constitutes the actual event. The finale of the film thus juxtaposes Medea's mythical consciousness to Jason's world of reality.

True to his particular reading of Gramscian Marxism, Pasolini believes that both capitalism and orthodox Marxism aim at the destruction of the pre-industrial cultures he admires both in Italy and in the Third World. Alienation derives not merely from working in a world where one's work product is controlled by an exploitive capitalist class, but it may also be caused by the loss of a sense of mythical identity, a sense of harmony with nature that is destroyed by a pragmatic, technological civilization. And the ultimate triumph of Medea provides Western viewers with a profoundly prophetic vision of the anger alien cultures feel when their values are attacked.

Thus, the impact of Freud, Jung, cultural anthropology, and Marx produces in Pasolini's Medea not only an engagingly original synthesis of the director's personal views on the human condition, but also a highly successful cinematic spectacle.

From Italian Cinema: From Neo-Realism to the Present (New Expanded Edition) by Peter Bondanella. (New York: Continuum, 1990).