Oedipus Rex (1967 film) Oedipus Rex (1967 film) Oedipus Rex ("Edipo re") is a 1967 Italian film directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Pasolini adapted the screenplay from the Greek tragedy "Oedipus Rex" written by Sophocles in 428 BC. The film was mainly shot in Morocco. A son is born to a young couple in pre-war Italy. The father, motivated by jealousy, takes the baby into the desert to be abandoned, at which point the film’s setting changes to the ancient world. The child is rescued, named Edipo by King Polybus (Ahmed Belhachmi) and Queen Merope (Alida Valli) of Corinth and raised as their own
Oedipus Rex and Thebes were the major focus of Greek epic poetry. The events surrounding the Trojan War were chronicled in the Epic Cycle, of which much remains, and those about Thebes in the Theban Cycle, which have been lost. The Theban Cycle recounted the sequence of tragedies that befell the house of Laius, of which the story of Oedipus is a part. Homer's "Odyssey" (XI.271ff.) contains the earliest account of the Oedipus myth when Odysseus encounters Jocasta (named Epicaste) in the underworld. Homer briefly summarises the story of Oedipus, including the incest, patricide, and Jocasta's subsequent suicide. However, in the Homeric