Electra / Ilektra (1972)
DVD9 (VIDEO_TS) | PAL 4:3 (720x576) | 01:47:28 | 7,46 Gb
Audio: Greek AC3 2.0 @ 192 Kbps | Subs: English
Genre: Drama | Nominated for Oscar + 11 wins | Greece
DVD9 (VIDEO_TS) | PAL 4:3 (720x576) | 01:47:28 | 7,46 Gb
Audio: Greek AC3 2.0 @ 192 Kbps | Subs: English
Genre: Drama | Nominated for Oscar + 11 wins | Greece
This excellent adaptation by Michael Cacoyannis of the famous tragedy by Euripides garnered him his first international success and an award at the 1962 Cannes Film Festival. Irene Papas plays Electra, the daughter of King Agememnon and sister of Orestes, caught up in an uncontrollable need for revenge. After the king returns from the battlefield, Clytemestra (his wife) joins with her lover in murdering the hapless ruler while he bathes. Orestes is sent away immediately, and Electra is left to simmer in her growing hatred of her mother until one day, she and Orestes manage to get together and hatch a scheme to avenge Agememnon's death.
IMDB
It is hard to imagine a better screen adaptation of a Greek tragedy than this version of Electra, based on the Euripides version of the story. Irene Papas is stunning as the young woman whose thirst for revenge blinds her to its repercussions. Papas portrays Electra with single-minded ferocity; her second thoughts once the awful deed is done to her mother are believable because she is, after all, a highly principled person, and only after she has carried out her mission can she see how wrong she was. Writer/director Michael Cacoyannis neatly opens up the play without detracting from its powerful language and emotions. The black-and-white cinematography by Walter Lassally makes a big contribution to the film's stark, yet somehow tender, look at a doomed family tragedy played out against a stark landscape. Nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, Electra unaccountably lost to Sundays and Cybele, an intimate and modest drama, but with nowhere near the power of this film.Tom Wiener, Rovi
At long last, a worthy screen rendering of a classic Greek drama has been achieved in the film of Euripides' "Electra,".
Indeed, this pictorial translation of one of the greatest Greek tragedies, produced and directed by Michael Cacoyannis in ancient dress and on locations in Greece, amounts to a brilliant utilization of the cinematic device to transmute the gold of verbal poetry from one to another art form.
Where previous attempts to make movies from the Greek classics have generally mired in the heavy going of too much declamation of the original poetic dialogue, this film avoids that dangerous pitfall by going to the other extreme and swinging wide of a form of presentation that is physically hitched to the structure of the stage.
Clearly, Mr. Cacoyannis knows you can't photograph words, that a medium as visual as motion pictures must not put too much dependence on the ear. Also, he sees that the contours of the drama in the Greek tragedies are so massive and elemental that they may be suggested and impressed upon the eye with a proper and tasteful presentation of graphic images.
Thus, he has made this "Electra" a powerful address to the eyes. He has taken his company outdoors and set it against the countryside, against great sweeping vistas of rugged landscape and eloquent stretches of sky.
The episode of Agamemnon's murder, engineered by his faithless wife in league with her lover, Aegisthus, is played beneath the great empty vault of heaven, so that base immensity of it is awesomely implied. And the torments of their daughter, Electra as she lives with the horror of this deed and her inevitable passion for vengeance, are graphically communicated in the harsh and barren aspects of her home in exile in a peasant's hut.
The inner fires of Electra are also made eloquent by the heroic appearance and performance of Irene Papas in this role. Seldom has a face or conveyance of the human figure so beautifully depicted the nature and the passion of a character as do Miss Papas here. Her eyes and the gestures say quite as much as the few words—the comparatively few words—she has to utter in expressing her grief and pain.
Aleka Catselli as Clytemnestra, the faithless mother, is a graphic figure of poetic contours, too—a glittering, soulless creature, who, in her confrontation scene with Electra, is a strong sense of frigid majesty. And Yannis Fertis, as Orestes, and others complete the superlative performance of the classic role.
A brilliant musical score by Mikis Catodorakis and the camera work of Walter Lassally contributes to what undoubtedly is to be a screen classic.
Special Features:
- Filmography
- Trailer
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