Synopsis

An upstanding Italian household is shaken and stirred when a handsome stranger arrives at the doorstep. He seduces every family member and then disappears.

Each has an epiphany of sorts, but no one knows who the mysterious man was or why he appeared.

 

Cast: Silvana Mangano, Terence Stamp, Massimo Girotti, Anne Wiazemsky, Laura Betti, Andrés José Cruz Soublette, Ninetto Davoli, Carlo De Mejo, Adele Cambria, Luigi Barbini, Giovanni Ivan Scratuglia, Alfonso Gatto

Venice (In Competition): Best Actress

Terence Stamp plays a mysterious figure who appears in the lives of a typical bourgeois Italian family.

He engages in sexual affairs with all members of the household: the devoutly religious maid, the sensitive son, the sexually repressed mother, the timid daughter and, finally, the tormented father. The stranger gives unstintingly of himself, asking nothing in return.

Then one day he leaves, as suddenly and mysteriously as he came. The subsequent void created forces each family member to confront what was previously concealed by the trappings of bourgeois life.

The mother seeks sexual encounters with young men, the son leaves the family home to become an artist, the daughter sinks into a catatonic state and the father strips himself of all material effects, handing his factory over to its workers, removing his clothes at a railway station and wandering naked into the wilderness. The maid returns to the rural village where she was born and is seen to perform miracles. -- Wikipedia