Phaedra

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.