Word: greeke
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Michael Cacoyannis's Iphigenia is "based" on Euripides's Iphigenia at Aulis, but has been freely "translated" by the director from ancient Greek verse into modern Greek prose. At least half of the words have been discarded in the process. Something is inevitably lost, but the result is thoroughly satisfying cinematically, an impressive film which comes within striking distance of greatness, only to blunder shamefully in its final moments...
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...
...this is, after all, the beginning of the Trojan war, and that calls for all sorts of cinematic embellishments. Euripides's play, like most good Greek tragedies, is notable for its economy, not of language, but of encounters. The scenes which Cacoyannis writes in are stirringly photographed but dramatically useless, and they seem even more gratuitous when invoking countless cliches. Take the first moments in the film: after the opening shot of a spear and some armor sitting on a rock in the hot sun, the camera rousingly pans the still ships, accelerating as it goes along, and ends...
...shot in her husband, practically whispering, "Just wait Costa Kozakos is a weakling caught between his fierce ambition and festering conscience; the actor, of the man, his impotence, with remarkable pathos. Carras's Menelaus, a weasely little fellow who can nonetheless rouse himself to noble, if ineffectual inch a Greek hero, from his physical splendor to that touch of reckless, defiant pride...
...showing profits like they're going out of style," says Morton Erstling, senior vice president of Eastern. Other fleet operators freely trumpet similar claims, but since most lines are foreign (Italian, Norwegian, Greek, even Soviet), privately owned and keep tightly guarded books, hard profit figures are impossible to nail down. Some lines, in fact, enjoy subsidies and tax breaks from their governments. Shipowners can cut costs by reducing crews and paring down provisions when the passenger load is light. But on some runs, 93% of the berths must be occupied for the shipowner to break even, and a half...