Word: medea
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Mercouri plays a fading film star who returns to her native Greece to appear in Medea and also in a TV film about her preparation for the role. As a publicity stunt she arranges to visit, in jail, an American woman (Ellen Burstyn) who, like Medea, has committed infanticide. What with a demanding rehearsal schedule and the raging and pouting she inflicts on her director and her entourage, you would think the Mercouri character would have no time left to feel guilty about exploiting the half-mad murderess, but she does. Repeatedly she goes back into the prison...
...nothing very vital is added to anyone's understanding of that classic figure, and Mercouri's performance in long scenes from Medea doesn't help much either. There is much eye rolling, teeth baring and anguished screeching, but no break in the clouds of self-absorption that always hover around her. Finally, the modern Medea's story gets told, the play opens, and the picture ends, leaving the audience no wiser...
...Gardner's organization is baffling, at least his style is endearing. The sense of mythic wonder that fills his books Grendel and Jason and Medea is present here in the form of vignettes and metaphors; and even when he rattles on about the good and the true, Gardner never pontificates, never becomes self-righteous. Even when what he says sounds like it would suit a preacher among the unbaptized, his manner remains that of the elderly raconteur, sitting by the fire with a mug of ale and a pipe...
...clock in proving to a computer their mastery of mythology, grammar and history. Nearby classrooms resounded to the ring of Ovid and Livy as the oratorical-minded -swathed in togas-declaimed before judges. Other judges trod carefully past papier-mache Pantheons and temples and an intricate mosaic depicting Medea fleeing to Athens, constructed from rice, grits and glue by a Tennessee contestant...
...With abundant gold are we constrained to buy a husband," lamented Euripedes' Medea in a sigh of woe that is as valid today as it was 2,500 years ago. No fewer than 32 articles of the modern Greek civil code govern and define the antique institution of the dowry -the practice of bestowing a property settlement on a daughter as an inducement to marriage. Now, however, Greece's time-honored system of mandatory dowries is under attack. Legislative pressure for its abolition comes chiefly from the seven women in Greece's 300-member Parliament. A draft...