Into the home of a classic bourgeois family--father, mother, son, daughter and maid--walks a stranger (Terence Stamp). This handsome, unassuming young man is 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 continues, “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....” (in Oswald Stack's Pasolini on Pasolini)
The Oxford Companion to the Film notes that “Pasolini began Teorema as a verse tragedy for the stage; this idea did not work, partly because of the minimal dialogue, so he transformed it into a film script and, later, a novel.... The film characteristically aroused controversy. The Italian government banned it and charged Pasolini with obscenity (he was acquitted on artistic grounds), while it was awarded the special prize of the International Catholic Bureau of Cinema.”