Filmography
May. 1st, 2007 01:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_lady_lilyElectra
In my attempts to pull together a syllabus for classics and film, it seemed a bit silly not to have some attempts at actually filming classical plays on the agenda. Hence this, which is Greek auteur Michael Cacoyannis' take on Euripides' version of the myth. It's in modern Greek, and I watched it with subtitles rather than dubbed, because the Greek speakers are actually very good with their delivery.
It was an interesting watch, although I'll freely admit that I ended up watching it in three segments (more to do with my schedule than anything concerning the film's basic merits) which may have affected my opinion. The first part is mainly silent acting to interestingly attempting-to-be-Greek music in which the 'back story' is told - Agamemnon's return to Mycenae, the murder, sending Electra off to marry a poor shepherd. Told with no words, all in moody black and white, lovely screen compositions. Speech begins when Electra gets to the random village she's been sent to and asks for her father's grave, where Aegisthus finds her and basically has a go. Then we're into Euripides' regular structure, where Electra goes to get water, Orestes turns up and masquerades as a stranger, he kills Aegisthus at a festival, they lure Clytemnestra and kill her in the peasant's house. There are some nice uses of the medium of film - for instance, rather than a long messenger speech about how Orestes and Pylades get into the festival and close to Aegistus, we get to see it, although the messenger speech and the 'that shouting can't be good, I'm going to kill myself' suspense is kept to good effect.
Irene Papas, the actress playing Electra with a surprisingly modern hairstyle, actually is pretty darn good. She has an amazingly emotive face, which goes from being a harridan to being all child-like and gentle apparently at whim. She makes good use of this for Electra's speeches and various moments of dramatic highlight, and gives a pretty convincing performance. Yannis Fertis plays Orestes with slightly less success (he's just a bit too young on film to pull off the steely determination he's aiming for), but is fabulous during the 'what have I done?' bit after the matricide. Aleka Katselli does a superb Clytemnestra, all big make-up and tight robes that make her look a bit like a Greek vase. Her final encounter with Electra is pretty darn good too.
Cacoyannis has done a good job of how to handle the chorus, using a group of black-robed Greek peasant women in, again, a very stylised manner against the hills of what looks like a very scrubby bit of Greek mountainside. They form walls of faces, they stand like columns on the steps leading up to the shepherd's hut, they walk with Electra from hut to river and welcome her when she first arrives and lead her to Agamemnon's grave - they even sing choral odes. If there were anything I was going to be particularly enthused about, it would be the use of the chorus, because it's really rather brilliant and pretty faithful to the function of a chorus in an actual tragedy. Ditto the setting on the Greek mountainside - it's not a locale that I had envisaged the play taking place in, what with my mindset being stuck in stages, but it was actually very effective.
One comment is that the style of acting is heavily stylized and all Heavy Drama, which gets a bit much. Another is that the DVD has the qualities of the film reel, meaning that it's choppy and jerks - that, I suspect, is just one of those things. Third, a lot of the cuts aren't checked by continuity - that is, Electra will be looking in one direction in shot A and another in shot B immediately after - but, again, given the nature of an arthouse-y film of this sort, that's not very surprising either.
Four stars - it moves a wee bit too slowly for my liking, but its faithfulness to the Greek original and its inventive use of the film medium deserve the rating.
In my attempts to pull together a syllabus for classics and film, it seemed a bit silly not to have some attempts at actually filming classical plays on the agenda. Hence this, which is Greek auteur Michael Cacoyannis' take on Euripides' version of the myth. It's in modern Greek, and I watched it with subtitles rather than dubbed, because the Greek speakers are actually very good with their delivery.
It was an interesting watch, although I'll freely admit that I ended up watching it in three segments (more to do with my schedule than anything concerning the film's basic merits) which may have affected my opinion. The first part is mainly silent acting to interestingly attempting-to-be-Greek music in which the 'back story' is told - Agamemnon's return to Mycenae, the murder, sending Electra off to marry a poor shepherd. Told with no words, all in moody black and white, lovely screen compositions. Speech begins when Electra gets to the random village she's been sent to and asks for her father's grave, where Aegisthus finds her and basically has a go. Then we're into Euripides' regular structure, where Electra goes to get water, Orestes turns up and masquerades as a stranger, he kills Aegisthus at a festival, they lure Clytemnestra and kill her in the peasant's house. There are some nice uses of the medium of film - for instance, rather than a long messenger speech about how Orestes and Pylades get into the festival and close to Aegistus, we get to see it, although the messenger speech and the 'that shouting can't be good, I'm going to kill myself' suspense is kept to good effect.
Irene Papas, the actress playing Electra with a surprisingly modern hairstyle, actually is pretty darn good. She has an amazingly emotive face, which goes from being a harridan to being all child-like and gentle apparently at whim. She makes good use of this for Electra's speeches and various moments of dramatic highlight, and gives a pretty convincing performance. Yannis Fertis plays Orestes with slightly less success (he's just a bit too young on film to pull off the steely determination he's aiming for), but is fabulous during the 'what have I done?' bit after the matricide. Aleka Katselli does a superb Clytemnestra, all big make-up and tight robes that make her look a bit like a Greek vase. Her final encounter with Electra is pretty darn good too.
Cacoyannis has done a good job of how to handle the chorus, using a group of black-robed Greek peasant women in, again, a very stylised manner against the hills of what looks like a very scrubby bit of Greek mountainside. They form walls of faces, they stand like columns on the steps leading up to the shepherd's hut, they walk with Electra from hut to river and welcome her when she first arrives and lead her to Agamemnon's grave - they even sing choral odes. If there were anything I was going to be particularly enthused about, it would be the use of the chorus, because it's really rather brilliant and pretty faithful to the function of a chorus in an actual tragedy. Ditto the setting on the Greek mountainside - it's not a locale that I had envisaged the play taking place in, what with my mindset being stuck in stages, but it was actually very effective.
One comment is that the style of acting is heavily stylized and all Heavy Drama, which gets a bit much. Another is that the DVD has the qualities of the film reel, meaning that it's choppy and jerks - that, I suspect, is just one of those things. Third, a lot of the cuts aren't checked by continuity - that is, Electra will be looking in one direction in shot A and another in shot B immediately after - but, again, given the nature of an arthouse-y film of this sort, that's not very surprising either.
Four stars - it moves a wee bit too slowly for my liking, but its faithfulness to the Greek original and its inventive use of the film medium deserve the rating.
