Word: agamemnon
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Iphigenia at Aulis unquestionably stands as one of the most timeless and powerful of the Greek tragedies. After the Trojan Paris elopes with Menelaus's wife Helen, the Greek kings and their armies converge on Aulis, from where, under the command of Menelaus's brother, Agamemnon, they will sail to reclaim the woman. There is no wind, however, to blow their sails, and the army becomes restless and angry under the intense heat. The prophet Calchas tells Agamemnon that in order for the gods to provide a wind, he must sacrifice his eldest daughter, Iphigenia. Horrified by the idea...
...director's best work is in the scenes one would think most difficult: the long speeches and confrontations which account for most of Euripides's play. Even relatively uninteresting scenes, the early arguments between Agamemnon and Menelaus, for example, are photographed with subtlety and bursting with dramatic urgency. There is not one such scene in the original that is not splendidly filmed and acted; had Cacoyannis stuck only to these, with a few choice atmospheric shots in between, his film would have been nearly flawless...
...some armor sitting on a rock in the hot sun, the camera rousingly pans the still ships, accelerating as it goes along, and ends in a shot of the entire beach, covered with naked, sweating Greek soldiers. In a moment, the Greeks divide respectfully into two lines, as Agamemnon and Menelaus ride through. Suddenly, a man keels over in the path of the horses. He is duly removed. This is to show you how hot it is. Or take the scene in Argos, when a messenger delivers the letter from Agamemnon to Clytemnestra. She leans out, over the beautiful mountains...
...mounted the steps to the alter (they take forever to climb; the sequence is twice as long as it should be), and uttered her beautiful last line, "Sweet light, farewell," the winds rise violently and the army heads for the ships cheering, Iphigenia has not yet been sacrificed; Agamemnon cries out and dashes up the steps, while she, hearing his cry, struggles to escape from Calchas and his priests, who are pulling her, screaming, toward the altar. It's Saturday-afternoon-at-the-movies stuff, and it's quite horrible. This manifestly changes the meaning of Iphigenia's death: apart...
George Arvantis's cinematography has both sweep and intimacy, although there is too much use of the zoom lens--a noxious device--especially on Agamemnon, who is on the receiving end several times in the first few scenes. Mikis Theodorakis's music begins execrably, thudding around in the first half-hour like a discard from some horror movie, but it begins to wake up with the arrival in Aulis of Iphigenia, and in the final scene provides lively, uplifting support during her climb. This is music that suggests a quiet grandeur without a hint of soupiness...