Into the home of a classic bourgeois family - father, mother, son, daughter, maid - walks a stranger (Terence Stamp), a handsome, unassuming young man (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 desire denied within the confines of the family structure. Liberated thus 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 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 up with a cry....” (in Oswald Stack, “Pasolini”) (JB)