The butchery [of the first twenty minutes of Medea] provides a neat excuse for Medea's later actions: infanticide is shown to be merely her innate (socially acceptable) function as a Colcian priestess resurfacing many years later for more personal reasons. Within Pasolini's intensely schematic telling, this works quite well; likewise his use of non-professionals, their natural gaucherie complementing his liking for static groups of people arranged like icon-portraits in passageways and arches. What, in his recent trilogy, has degenerated into untidiness, in Medea is still valid because of a rigid, completely unself-in-dulgent mise-en-scène….

[It is Maria Callas's] physical presence which propels the rest of the film—a film badly in need of propelling to prevent it going into reverse. In retrospect one can see Medea as the last in a long line of films which became increasingly sparer and more static; what Pasolini has now lost in self-control he has gained in pace. Medea (1970) is beautiful to watch, baffling to follow, and interesting to analyse on paper. As a piece of filmmaking, presumably aimed at attracting audiences, it is unnecessarily slow, emotionally sterile, and extremely boring.