Pasolini the screenwriter. The process of writing “Oedipus Rex”

Abstract

For the film Edipo re (1967), Pier Paolo Pasolini wrote four screenplays, which are now in the “Alessandro Bonsanti” Contemporary Archive at the Gabinetto G. P. Vieusseux in Florence. From the first script written in 1966 to the final one published in the volume edited by Garzanti, Pasolini made continuous modifications and corrections to the text in order to make it suitable for the film. A careful study of the four different scripts conserved in the Vieusseux allows us not only to examine Pasolini’s modus operandi as a scriptwriter, but also to observe the evolution between the different scripts. In fact, the final text is the combination of a technical script with a narrative text: these two typologies are combined, giving rise to a single hybrid text with original characteristics.