Oedipus Rex ([a.k.a.: Edipo Re] Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1967)

A blind beggar, incongruously sporting dark sunglasses, stumbles around the streets of ancient city begging for alms when he recognises the steps of a friend approaching.

Oedipus: "Hey, Josephus!"

Josephus (high-fiving the blind man as he passes): "Hey, motherfucker!"

- Ronny Graham and Gregory Hines, in Mel Brooks' History of the World, Part I.

There's little so awkward as a joke that a child has to explain to their parents, except one that involves mythological incest.  Still, a joke that very much amused my school age self (probably my second favourite in the film, aside from Torquemada's auto-da-fe musical sequence ["It's what you oughtn't to do, but you do anyway!"]) due to lazy afternoons at the library guzzling volumes on Greek legends and history - long before actually studying Sophocles' Oedipus Rex at college: possibly the most famous out of the hundred and twenty-something plays 'what he wrote' (not that anywhere near his 124 or so canon are still extant).  Dude was a dramatic powerhouse: he was entered into theatrical competitions around thirty times, of which there is a historical record of him winning at least twenty four.  Imagine being nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award thirty times, and coming home on twenty four of those occasions with the Oscar.

The story of everyone's favourite mother-loving Theban monarch had been dramatically adapted before Sophocles set quill to parchment (or stylus to slate, or whatever) by Aeschylus in his Oedipodea - a trilogy comprising his plays Laius, Oedipus and Seven Against Thebes; the latter of the three is the only extant text, the prior two (as well as the comic satyr play Sphinx) being lost to the mists of time.  Perhaps the ancient archives had their own Pamillus Nashus gleefully burning all known copies of prized dramas.  Archive BBC TV fans will know what I'm talking about, at least.  Euripides, too, would turn his hand to an Oedipal oeuvre (Antigone, Oedipus and The Phoenician Women) which eerily followed the same pattern of only the third instalment surviving - the first and second surviving only as fragmentary scraps.

Betwixt Aeschylus and Euripides, Sophocles would craft his own Holy Trilogy, the famed Theban Plays - the second of which to be written (but the first, chronologically, like some prequel of antiquity) was Oedipus Tyrannus, alias Oedipus the King.  Previously committed to celluloid in 1957 by Tyrone Guthrie, in a Greek theatre style production with cast sporting masks like the tragedians of old, the play would also be adapted for the screen in English in 1968 - the year following the film with which we are here concerned - by veteran director Philip Saville (who not only directed my favourite Dracula adaptation, the 1977 BBC Count Dracula,  but also 1964's Hamlet at Elsinore, 1986's The Life and Loves of a She-Devil [containing a retina-scarring scene featuring TV's Doctor Who Tom Baker that can and did warp at least one young mind], 1988's First Born in which Charles Dance was a monkey's uncle, and the 1997 Metroland with Christian Bale and Emily Watson - quite the C.V.) with Christopher Plummer and Lilli Palmer getting jiggy with it.

Leftist firebrand auteur Pier Paolo Pasolini - whose 1975 abduction, torture and murder (most likely at the hands of the fascist-allied criminal terrorist organisation Banda della Magliana) still remains unsolved and unlikely to be reopened under the current far-right Italian government - had already established himself as one of the premier enfant terrible of Italian cinema by way of his scriptwriting talents for movies such as Federico Fellini's 1957 Nights of Cabiria and the 1960 'posh people reeling around a fountain' classic La Dolce Vita before making his own directorial debut with 1961's Accattone, starring his future fated Theban monarch Franco Citti as well as Silvana Corsini and - in a small uncredited voice role - Modesty Blaise herself Monica Vitti.

By 1967 Pasolini had made movie magic such as Mamma Roma with Anna Magnani (there's a Morrissey song in that, probably) and The Gospel According to St Matthew but only just graduated from monochrome to colour with his segment of the '67 portmanteau film The Witches (the other stories in the compendium being helmed by luminous luminaries such as  Luchino Visconti, Franco Rossi, Mauro Bolognini and Vittorio De Sica) before taking on Sophocles' play as his first full colour feature film.  

Opening with an original to the film prelude set in early 20th century Italy, we meet an unnamed couple (Silvana Mangano, star of much classic Euro cinema but forever - to me anyway - Reverend Mother Ramallo from David Lynch's classic 1984 adaptation of Dune, and Luciano Bartoli) who find themselves saddled with a newborn child much to the chagrin of the jealous father who elects to abandon the baby boy in the wilderness - a very rocky Morocco, standing in for some null-space hinterland betwixt wartime Italy and Ancient Greece.  The child is of course found bound hand and foot and taken in by King Polybus of Corinth (Ahmed Belhachmi) - who, like other monarchs seen in this movie wears a tall stacked golden crown more suited to Renaissance popes than a basilieus or wanax of late Bronze Age Hellas - and his Queen Merope (Alida Valli, again and even more so than Mangano a star of many cinematic classics but will always be remembered firstly by your correspondent as Madame Blanc from Dario Argento's 1977 horror opus Suspiria [more on which here for anyone interested]) and raised with the name Oedipus for his swollen feet.

Upon reaching manhood, the princeling (Franco Citti, voiced by Paolo Ferrari) leaves Corinth and, true to the tale, is predicted by the Delphic Oracle (played by an unknown performer, and sadly this particular Pythia lacks either a serpentine sidekick or anything to do with Gallifrey) to kill his father and make love to his mother.  Resolving to dodge his fate by not returning to Corinth, Oedipus instead heads towards Thebes where he encounters his natural father, Laius (Bartoli again), upon the road to the city whee an early instance of footbound road rage leads to Laius' death when the arrogant monarch refuses to give way.  Arriving in the city itself to find Thebes plagued by the Sphinx - though anyone expecting a leonine human hybrid or winged chimaera,  as I did, will be greatly disappointed at the monster's appearance as a loinclothed man in a wickerwork witch doctor-style mask - our hero slays the beast and is granted the boon of marrying Queen Jocasta (Mangano, again in a double role).

After wedding and bedding his quite literal own MILF (repeatedly, for she is one hot mama and legend tells us that their incestuous loins bear fruit with four children-siblings: Antigone, Ismene, Eteocles and Polynices), Oedipus reigns over Thebes as god-king until the blind prophet - a seer without sight - Tiresias (American actor Julian Beck, the terrifying Reverend Kane from Poltergeist II, appearing ) reveals the truth and prophesies that the king will end his days as a blind itinerant beggar wandering in foreign lands.  After initially refusing to believe and engaging in one last big motherlovin' bag session with Jocasta, Oedipus has the Oracle's prophecy confirmed and goes quite round the bend when his mumsy wife hangs herself over the revelation.  Gouging out his own eyes, he leaves the city he ruled bleeding and cloaked like a beggar heading out on the lonely road.

Which will lead, eventually, to Colonus.

Talking of ancient Greece, we've all surely heard of the Ship of Theseus (also perhaps known better to the average British person as 'Trigger's Broom', in honour of Roger Lloyd-Pack's legendary Only Fools and Horses character) - this being the maxim about whether or not a thing can remain the same thing if it is gradually rebuilt and replaced - but not many I wager will have heard of the Boat of Eckert.  Eckert's boat is legendary at least round these parts for always standing in the guy's front garden, like a prize someone would have won on Bullseye; though this town is at least on the coast - most of the time the participants in that TV show would win a speedboat and have to take it home to some landlocked part of the country like Birmingham.  My brother used to go fishing with Eckert in said boat, quite often along with our erstwhile next door neighbour Brian who later died of an aneurysm - or, as my brother and I put it, "Brain's Brian exploded!".  So now you know.  And you can't not know.  Sorry about that.