In his films (Œdipus-Rex, 1967 ; Medea, 1970), Pasolini manifests a hankering after a form of the sacred that includes the tragic dimension, tragedy representing, according to the film maker, the outbreak of the sacred into man's daily life. While Œdipe-rex signals, through the figures of the « African » Sphinx and Tiresias (as interpreted by Julian Beck, the director of the Living Theatre) the emergence of tragedy and the sacred, Medea takes us back to the confrontation of the archaic religious world of the Colchean high-priestess and magician with Jason's rational world. Through the « modern » prologue and epilogue of Œdipus-rex Pasolini, by means of contemporary autobiographical fragments, gives us a meditation on (and an exemplary trans...