Word: oedipus
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...themselves literary scholars and critics would focus on the whole literary work and give perspective to students, then the world's literary masterpieces could again perform their unique function, speaking to all men at all times about man's condition. There is nothing "aloof" about Sophocles' Oedipus, and Dante, despite his terza rima, was in there dealing with the nitty-gritty of his day. It's time our scholars met the challenge of a technology that can view the whole earth from the eye of a satellite...
...your review of Oedipus [Oct. Ill, you castigate Chris Plummer for making the King of Thebes "arrogant rather than hubristic," his fate more like "a matter of just deserts than a result of the awesome machinations of Apollo." Face it, baby: Apollo is dead. Nobody prays in the Theater of Dionysius today. And whatever the 20th century gods do, they don't machinate. Sophocles' play, though, lives on. Ever wonder why? Chris was trying to tell you, but you didn't listen...
Maybe you're right in feeling that he understates the part-it's the Method, and it isn't noted for its ability to cope with poetic cadences. But when he says that the fall of Oedipus is inevitable, gods or no gods, you ought to believe him. The gods have been blamed long enough. Arrogance alone causes Oedipus' problems. His arrogant, or if you prefer, hubristic pride is the tragic flaw in an otherwise noble character...
...something of a stunt when British TV Director Philip Saville went to Denmark's Elsinore Castle to make a television Hamlet, starring Christopher Plummer. Going to Greece to film Oedipus the King in an ancient amphitheater is also a gimmick, but it has paid off better. The stones of the theater at Dodona and the sere Greek hills behind them grandly evoke the atmosphere in which Sophocles himself saw his great tragedy performed. The local peasant faces among the extras give an authenticity to the hoi polloi that makeup men could never have managed...
...problem is that Saville took Christopher Plummer along on the trip. Plummer is simply not up to Oedipus. For one thing, he has a bad habit of punctuating his lines with portentous pauses that have no connection with either sense or cadence. A more serious failure is his foothills approach to the part-he neither climbs high enough at the beginning nor falls low enough at the end. Plummer as King of Thebes is arrogant rather than hubristic; his fate seems more like a matter of just deserts than a result of the awesome machinations of Apollo...