Into the home of a classic bourgeois family-father, mother, son, daughter, and maid-walks a stranger (Terence Stamp). This handsome, unassuming young man was described by Pasolini as “a generically ultra-terrestrial and metaphysical apparition: he could be the Devil, or a mixture of God and the Devil. The important thing is that he is something authentic and unstoppable.” One by one, each family member seeks-and finds-in the visitor a catalyst for the fulfillment of desires denied within the confines of the family structure. Liberated by a moment of authenticity, each is left, on the visitor's departure, with a personal kind of madness, stripped naked in a symbolic desert. Pasolini's first film shot in a bourgeois milieu is predicated on the theorem that “anything done by the bourgeoisie, however sincere, profound and noble it is, is on the wrong track.” But, Pasolini continued, “this condemnation . . . has to be suspended before a final assessment is made, since . . . the bourgeoisie is undergoing a revolutionary change. . . . That is why the film remains ‘suspended'; it ends with a cry.”