Uma nova tragédia: as sobrevivências da antiguidade nas variantes de Pasolini do mito grego

Abstract

The intent of this research is to produce a filmic analysis of Oedipus Rex (1967), Medea (1969) and Notes Towards an African Orestes (1970), directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini, reinterpretations of Oedipus', Medea's and Orestes' myth. Through these films, we study the survival of elements from antiquity in modern times. We have the objective of understanding why ancient mythologies still remain potent to the human imagination and to influence modern filmmakers like Pasolini. We start our study with an introduction to the poetic production of the italian artist, presenting the influence that poetry had in the development of his cinematographic ouvre, discussing authors such as Amoroso (2002), Nazário (2007) and Xavier (1993). From that, we notice how the prevalence of matters related to mythology and antiquity are essential to the understanding of Pasolini's art. In a way to better acknowledge these questions, we're going to discuss concepts like mythological variants and tragedy, as studied by Eliade (2016), Brandão (1987), Vernant (1990), Gazolla (2001) and Lesky (1996); as well as the concepts nachleben and pathosformel, formulated by the german art historian Aby Warburg (2015), proposing a dialogue between the thoughts of Warburg and Pasolini. Then, we deepen into the concept of montage, important for the theory and practice of both Pasolini (1982) and Warburg, so that we can observe how montage techniques enable the appearance of the survival of works of art from the antiquity in present times, approximating these two artists with the montage conceptions of other authors, such as Michaud (2013), Eisenstein (2002), Benjamin (2011) and Bazin (2014). We also research the intersection between cinema and other arts, such as painting and literature, understanding that the montage is the fundamental link between different artistic expressions. Ultimately, we're going to focus on the filmic analysis of Oedipus Rex (1967), Medea (1969) and Notes Towards an African Orestes (1970), in a way to identify how the concepts worked along the research, for instance survival and montage, are perceptible in the cinematic language developed by Pasolini. We understand that the filmmaker conceives very particular reinterpretations less of the tragic plays and more of the mythologies, not only reproducing classical elements from antiquity, but also utilizing the cinematic form to reshape them.