-
Greek Tragedy into Film by Kenneth Mackinnon (review)
- Echos du monde classique: Classical news and views
- University of Toronto Press
- Volume XXXIII, n.s. 8, Number 3, 1989
- pp. 388-394
- Review
- Additional Information
388 BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS KENNETH MACKINNON. Greek Tragedy into Film. Beckenham, Kent : Croom Helm, 1986. Pp. ix + 199,8 plates. Hardcover, £22.50, 0-7099-4625-2. The Greek Film Archive has preserved among its possessions a brief but treasured document, eleven minutes of a production of Prometheus Bound staged in the anci ent theatre at Delphi on May 9, 1927. For the guardian of the Archive, Mrs. Aglae Mitropolou s, this production marks the rebirth of tragedy, a view which Oliver Taplin has endorsed: "All the modem Greek productions at Epidaurus and throu ghout the world have drawn sustenance from this event " ("The Delph ic Idea and After," TLS [July 17, 1981] 811). The primitive fragm ent of film shows Hephaestus hard at work once more, hamme ring away until Prometheus is imprisoned on a man-made rock format ion set again st the magnificent natur al landscap e of Delphi -Mount Kirphys and the Plcistos ravine. Kratos and Bia are in attendance , and in this early film the tradition al silence of Bia is shared by all. Mackinnon points out that, since the characters wear masks, obscuring the actors' lips, the audience cannot even guess at what is being said in this silent film (44) . He continues by observing that the Aeschylean text is missing in this 1927 produ ction. After some gracefully exec uted dances in dolphin-adorned costumes, the chorus of Oceanid s pit their delicate skills against the rock to which Prometheus is riveted, mountin g it (a feat achieved, it seems, with the help of concealed steps) in order to adopt finally a somewhat incongruou s zigzag format ion from top to bottom of the rock. Their triumph is short-lived: the top of the rock formation is then shown collapsing, taking the unfortunate Prometheus with it. It is part of the legend of this production that the eagles of Delphi came and hovered over the theatre-in homage, as it were, but perhap s out of curiosity to catch a final glimpse of this man-made cataclysm which ended the play. The eag les were not the only observers of this production. The glimpses preserved for us from this "rebirth of tragedy" were made possible by the camera. Unlike the Wagnerian rebirth , which proclaimed the possibility of a new Gesamtkunstwerk, cinema entered unobtru sively, in an ancillary role, simply record ing the theatri cal performance of a Greek tragedy. Since that point the relations between film and tragedy have varied considerably; but in retrospect one cannot help feeling that it was the presence of the camera which contrib uted to the now legendary status of the 1927 production at Delphi. This was not the first time Greek tragedy had been performed in modem Greece. As Taplin notes, Antigone had been performed in the "theatre" of Herodes Atticus as soon as that site had been excavated in 1867, and regular performances of tragedies had been staged in Italian in the ancient theatre at Syracuse since 1914. But for Taplin the event of 1927 marked a break in modern Greek produ ctions, as what had previously been "only museum pieces for the dignitaries in the dress circle" evolved into a "living dramati c movement, " leading to the foundation of the Greek National Theatre in 1930. The first public performance of a Greek tragedy BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 389 to be filmed in its entirety (and to have been preserved in full) was that of Sophocles' Ele ctra in 1961 at Epidaurus. In the last twenty years, however, there have been over a do zen film s inspired by Gre ek tragedy (which, surprisingly, amounts to several more than those from the same period which have Shakespeare as their source). These films were assembled in The (Briti sh) National Film Theatre programme for June , 1981, "Greek Tragedy on Film ," and are now the subject of a book by Kenneth Mackinnon, Senior Lec ture r in Classical Civilization and Film Studie s at the Polytechni c of North London. Discu ssion s of the individual films are organi sed into seve ral groups as Mackinnon structures his book in term s of categories suggested by Jack...