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Phaedra (1961)

Director: Jules Dassin

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2 reviews

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

A risibly misbegotten attempt to update Euripides' Hippolytus, and not a patch upon Dassin's best Hollywood work. Mercouri is characteristically overbearing as the wife of a shipping magnate (Vallone) who falls in love with her stepson (Perkins, hopelessly miscast). But the main problem is that the transposition from ancient to modern Greece simply won't wash: gone are the poetry, psychological insights, and dramatic single-mindedness of the original, while the horror of incest seems horribly overblown when applied to a stepson in the modern world. Thus the final car crash is less tragic than wholly unnecessary, and what one takes away from the film is the impression of a classic travestied.

Author: GA 0000-00-00 00:00:00

Time Out Film Guide

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User reviews of this film

Laurence McKinney said...

Posted on Feb 26 2008 13:31 I agree with Donald. Mr. GA is miserably ill-equipped to discuss what is probably a masterpiece-by-mistake. I heard William Golden, Lord of the Flier author, remark that he had no idea of the Freudian ovetones, he was just telling a story. Likewise, this is a nearly perfect pint for point re-telling of Hippolytus (yess, I have a couple of Harvard degrees) - and since I saw it when I was dating a Boston debutante who had shared a psyciatrist woth Tony Perkins, who was from a prominent Boston family, it was almost a connection at the time. Still, as a young man who adored Aston Martins it was an easy slip from horses to sports cars, the Greek Shipping Emporer was a perfect king, Mercouri would have gotten even me going around that fire and the magnificent score of Mikis Teodorakis ... I still play it on the piano forty years later, like State of Seige and Zorba, this guy could take a tune and yank you around with it. The Greek crowds made for the perfect "chorus" and it played out like the perfect tragedy ... push it too far and EVERYTHING goes right down the tubes. That last scene were he drives the Aston Martin furiously along the cliff road to the thundering chords of J.S. Bach fleeing the father who now knows what he's done ... and around the corner comes a semi - and off the cliff he goes in that whitre sports car into the Ageaen - come on, GA, what did you expect? A sea monster? That's fine for Euripides, but in an adaptation you need something as quick and and sudden and as deadly. Why not a semi? Boom! And as they bring the news to dad, their bringing his dead wife up the steps ... lordy, it plays like Hamlet. It may have been Dassin's quick one for his wife .... but Greek tragedy is deep in all of us, and he make a great one here. I really wish it was avaikable,

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DONALD STABILER said...

Posted on Feb 10 2008 15:07 I CANNOT UNDERSTAND WHY THIS MOVIE IS STILL NOT AVAILABLE ON DVD OR VHS. WHAT CAN BE DONE ABOUT IT?

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