"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned" describes Medea, whose hubris and amour fou for the bold and beautiful Jason leads to her downfall. Revered as a goddess by her own people, she betrays her own divinity and her race when she aids him to steal the sacred fleece, killing her own god-brother by decapitation during their escape. After bearing two sons to Jason in Greece, Medea is still not accepted and fails to adjust to Greek culture. The affection of acclaimed hero Jason strays and his ambition culminates in a betrothal to King Kreon's daughter. But when Medea learns of this betrayal and negation of her love and sacrifice her fury knows no bounds. She summons up the dark forces within her (she is a barbarian sorceress after all) for vengeance against those who have wronged her by killing Jason's sons, welcoming him with a false semblance of conciliation and acceptance while serving his dead sons to him for dinner. She sends two magnificent marriage cloaks to the king and his daughter who, when they don them, burst into flames. She then departs in rage leaving Jason to live with the results of the infamy he caused her enact through destroying her life. Maria Callas, in her only film, shows the famous range and subtlety she enjoyed as an opera star. Her fierce control and rage are memorable. Although this was a low budget film, it is extremely evocative and leaves lasting impressions. The sequence in the beginning when Jason was being tutored by the centaur Chiron about his destiny was very effective, and marked the innovative trick-photographic technique of melding man to horse to make it look very real and convincing. The primitive settings and human sacrifice of Medea's people helped to establish her dark, powerful and exotic barbarian character. English subtitles helped make up for the unfortunate dubbing. A strange and powerful version which holds it own against other interpretations.

Pasolini's MEDEA, boosting the household name Maria Callas' one-off celluloid bash, mesmerically sinks its teeth into the fecund soil of ancient Greek myth, story-wise, it welds together Jason and the Argonauts' quest of golden fleece with the play of Euripides, and takes liberty with Pasolini's trenchant interpretation about possession, betrayal and revenge.

Exhibiting the sui-generis topography of Göreme in Turkey's Cappadocia Region, an immemorial mountainous area grandly preserved with its ancient architecture (caves, churches etc.) and scraggy outlook, the place itself is a marvel to behold, nevertheless, Pasolini makes great play of his unfettered imagination to limn the mythical tribe of Medea (Callas),a pageantry of madcap costumes and primitive implements, topping off by a head-rolling, blood-drinking human-sacrifice ritual in supplication of harvest, savagery and sanctity, like conjoined twins, forever mediating mankind's self-seeking turpitude.

Catching sight of Jason (Gentile) for the first time, as if struck by coup-de-foudre, Medea, asks her brother Absyrtus (Tramonti) to steal the golden fleece, together they join Jason and the co., en route to Greece, Absyrtus is sacrificed in the hands of Medea (not unlike the boy killed earlier) in order to defer the pursing forces, executed with Pasolini's clinical philosophy, it has a discerning tang of disinterest countervailing the cockamamie action, and that is distinctive from Pasolini's treatment.

The second half takes place in Jason's homeland, where Medea has borne two boys for him, but Jason is bent on marrying the Corinthian princess Glauce (Clémenti),which causes Medea and her sons in danger of exile. So, perdition is brewed in Medea's witchery, and Pasolini capriciously presents us two different approaches with the same denouement, but the crunch is the scandalous filicide served as the ultimate malice from a jilted lover, which would be plundered with bone-chilling assiduity in Joachim Lafosse's OUR CHILDREN (2012).

Albeit its esoteric backstory and accompanied by a religious assortment of folkloric tuneage, MEDEA belongs to the more digestible bracket among Pasolini's corpus, and Callas is more than persuasive in imparting Medea's desperation and resolution, a concrete cause célèbre engraved with Pasolini's immense ambition and poetic pedagogy, MEDEA deserves a better reputation.

I love Pasolini, and Medea is easily the weakest of his works that I've seen. After having made the brilliant adaptation of the Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex, Medea seems rather uninspired. It retains most of Pasolini's beautiful settings, but the script is a poor adaptation of Euripides' play. The film's as slow as they come, and to me it seemed like a way to cover up the lack of ideas. Maria Callas is excellent as Medea, but she really doesn't have that much screen time, if you measure it. Most of the film is made up of people performing weird rituals, and the characters of Jason and Medea don't do all that much. I don't like Pasolini's interpretation of Jason as a chauvanist, egotistical jerk. It's too simplistic, and it's unfair moralizing from a modern vantage point. The character has much more depth in the various myths, even in Euripides' play. Medea's depth is sapped, as well, and her motivation in the film is sketchy at best. And then there are a couple of confusing ellipses, especially an extended fantasy sequence (apparently) where Medea imagines killing Glauce and Creon, followed by the reality. It feels more like there were two versions of this section, and the editor screwed up and left both in. Pasolini's direction is often amazing, as is the cinematography and music. I didn't hate Medea, but I can't muster any enthusiasm for it. 6/10.