An argument can be made that Kurosawa made use of the Greek chorus form in crowd scenes. Extras would be static watching a central drama, only to react in unison with the emotional beats. Thus exaggerating and giving greater weight to the emotions playing out.
I think you already had a sponsor before this video, but I wanted to congratulate you for the progress you've made.Thank you master and mentor of cinema
The Trojan Women stroke me as a modern play: a Greek taking the point of view of the defeated enemies, women even, in the founding epic of Greek culture. 25 centuries ago!!!
Some of the best commentary on classic Greek tragedy, unsurprisingly, can be found in Aristophanes when, for example, in “The Frogs”, Aeschylus and Euripides debate who was the better tragedian.
Okay, I think I've found the audience for one of the best jokes I've ever heard: A man walked into a Greek tailor shop and handed the tailor a pair of pants. The tailor looked at the pants and saw a long tear. He said to the customer, "Euripides?" Customer asked tailor, "Eumenides?" Thank you, thank you. I'll show myself out now.
Mr. Moviewise, you are so fun! Thank you for this whirlwind visit to Greece. I just saw the restoration of Seven Samouri today, a masterclass in movie making. Perhaps, a trip to medieval Japan??
I will say, I love the Irene papas Electra. And I intend to watch the other tragedies too. It’s so fascinating to watch Greek stories told by actual Greeks. From the Greek perspective. Albeit with some changes. And how different it is from how Hollywood tends to sanitize the stories.
14:19 Just when I thought 1961's Antigone wouldn't show up, there it is! Admittedly, I only stumbled across it online but I still enjoyed it. Plus, I was surprised to see Irene Papas since I only knew her from Moustapha Akkad's films.
So when you watch Pasolini does it make you want to rip out your eyes so you don't see what you did like sleeping with your mother? If so you might be a Greek tragedy.
I'm not a screenwriter, but I do write / draw - and am perceptually at least 800,000 years old- so do think I owe tons of respect to the youth and their craft.
Speaking of Irene Papas and Ancient Greece, anyone had the chance to watch Franco Rossi’s 1968 TV miniseries "The Odyssey"? It was a pretty faithful and realistic adaptation of Homer’s epic. If I recall correctly, I think there was a "Greek chorus" of women in at least one scene.
This is wonderful. I'll leave it to the reader to guess why I might like this video. :) (been using these names in online settings since not too long after reading several of these in college)
IMO Iphigenia is one of the best films ever, and the performances of Tatiana Papamoschou in the title role and Panos Mihalopoulos as Achilles are among the best in movie history.
Agreed. Cacoyannis's "Iphigenia" is the strongest adaptation of a Greek tragedy I've seen. Everything comes together perfectly in a way no other adaptation fully does. A Great film.
My favorite filmed tragedy would be peters Halls run of the Oresteia from 1983. Its on TH-cam, though it is not a movie but a recording of the stage performance it utilizes the striking and gutteral translation of Tony Harrison, one you wont be able to find online on a pdf! I would also like to mention Peter Dodd who did a short sort of abridged animated short of Prometheus Bound.
You had me at "Elektra"! How do I even know about this play's existence? Because Captain Marvel's Brie Larson is going to star in this exact play in London next year. ❤
The new series about the Menendez brothers uses a gossip journalist (Nathan Lane) and his dinner guests as a Greek chorus. It was a pretty inspired way to use the classical convention.
"I can hardly WAIT for the comments saying, 'you just don't get it." I'm going to keep it real with you, Moviewise. You are probably the only one here who has seen Straub-Huillet films. And from the sounds of it, rightfully so.
WHAT!?!? You didn't cover Spike Lee's classic Chi-Raq, the retelling of Aristophanes' Lysistrata. I'm actually shocked as this to me was one of the more creative ways of bringing Greek plays into the modern era.
Not a fan of how you casually disparaged Hölderlin. In spite of his late onset mental illness, he is universally recognised as one of Germany's greatest poets, and his Greek translations in particular are seen as authoritative.
I realize this is my modern mind, but one reason I have trouble with classic tragedies, from Eurypides to Shakespeare, is that they require (demand!) a great deal of pathos on the part of the audience for the situation of the particular characters, but I just always find myself wanting to shout, "well then, stop behaving like idiots!" It's like the 20th time you see a party split up in a slasher horror movie. You just don't care about the characters anymore because they act as if they *want* to be murdered and the plot is simply mechanically moving along to accommodate them. In these tragedies, the characters virtually demand to meet tragedy and death. At a certain point, am I still the bad guy for just wanting to leave them to it? But the play demands I continue to give a crap. Maybe don't try to outsmart Fate and the gods when they decree that X is going to happen. Don't compare yourself to gods who are arbitrarily powerful and demonstrably petty. Don't try to bargain with Hades, and if you do, *follow the friggin' rules* ! Be okay with someone "someday" coming along to take your throne. No one is king forever. Be nice to your family. Try actually communicating. And just generally, don't be an arrogant, presumptuous jerk. Have these people never *seen* a play before? Do you want a tragedy? 'Cause this is how you get a tragedy, folks! Conversely though, even if a given character behaved in a good and wise way, tragedy will still tragedy. It's a defining feature. In a universe governed by truly arbitrary forces, it's hard to get invested. "Yes, your life sucks and there's nothing you can do about it. Definitely let me hear about it for the next four hours or so." So, is the lesson "be wise and avoid tragedy," or "life is arbitrary, so just do the best you can?" Seems a bit contradictory.
The masks make more sense than watching the same face play many roles and attempting to convince yourself that that person is all those characters. Penguin effectively does the same thing. It’s just a very realistic mask
Seeing the 1957 Oedipus Rex closed a circle I'd long held onto. This is the version of the play Tom Lehrer was referring to in his introduction to his "Theme tune" for that particular "flick".. th-cam.com/video/mScdJURKGWM/w-d-xo.html
Closest I can come are the old BBC Plays for Today. Mike Leigh, Ken Loach and, best of all, Alan Clarke got their starts there and did amazing work. Leigh's 'Hard Labour' is a standout. Most of the 'plays' are really films, shot on location.
I thought I was the only one who disliked Pasolini as a director! He might have been a great writer (contributed to the screenplay of Nights of Cabiria, one of my favorites), but had no mastering of cinema language whatsoever. His movies look like made by a cinema student, and a bad one.
i agree but in some cases like pasolini i guess you'll know what you think after salò and gospel according to matthew, i personally would have stopped there
THE PROBLEM with adaptations, is that we dont see Ancient Greeks as normal Humans like us: we too much base on the Statues and scenes from pots that were static of course... - People were not static, they did not speak like stiff automatons, and those words were common words, what the normal people used. I guess actors were much more bodily expressive than us, with no cameras and effects whatever. See our misconceptions: we thought till recently that statues were pure white elegant marble.... Adaptations with surealism are just incompetent, or without budget Some movies/series about i.e. 1800 England are much more realistic recently, instead of rigid and stiff like previous decades. Hope this expands. An anthropologist, with a historian and an archaiologist, would adapt these Plays better.
Though you have to take into consideration that plays, especially tragedies, in ancient (archaic and classical) Greece were actually religious rituals. So they had to be played with solemnity and hieratic attitude, since they showed the myths of the fathers. With the evolution of costumes and culture, they became more and more stories about human flaws and contrasts.
@@Laurelin70 Please, is this true that they started as religious rituals? I want to learn more about this. I also understand that Rituals should be Stiff in our modern minds, but thats my point, that we dont know their ways of expression - the people that made Dionysus a god, could not be stiff I guess, and would use expresionism to the utmost....maybe!
@@realfake8269 According to Aristotle, at the origin of tragedy would stand the rites in honor of Dyonisus. And even if other more modern scholars don't share the same hypotesis about the etymology of the words, they are still convinced about the religious origin of the theatre (just recently visited an exhibition here in Rome about that, and the guide said that at first theatrical plays, especially tragedies, were represented during religious festival or holidays). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_tragedy
That rabbit hole was enticing but much too deep. With Anouilh I’d end up talking about Giraudoux and Cocteau (all Jeans) and Goethe, and Racine and Corneille and Seneca.
8:43 Wrong ! There is also a french film made in the 1950’s for television of « The Persians » by Aeschylus. It’s even uploaded to TH-cam: th-cam.com/video/UEm0b7vUDJc/w-d-xo.htmlsi=QHYhNjFlN9CeeNPN
Haven't you watched this version of Oedipus? It's very good. Christopher Plummer and Orson Welles. th-cam.com/video/H4jPcyBu0Rw/w-d-xo.htmlsi=41hm80pGD9_6Eql8
An argument can be made that Kurosawa made use of the Greek chorus form in crowd scenes.
Extras would be static watching a central drama, only to react in unison with the emotional beats.
Thus exaggerating and giving greater weight to the emotions playing out.
Not to mention, Throne of Blood just opens with a ghostly chorus.
Euripides telling us to smash that like button had me on the floor.
EuripiDES NUTS!
As an old theatre director who has done a handful of Greek plays, I appreciate this video
To paraphrase the character Lloyd Richards in All About Eve, all screenwriters should be 2500 years old!
That wouldn’t help them because stars never die!
great movie
I think you already had a sponsor before this video, but I wanted to congratulate you for the progress you've made.Thank you master and mentor of cinema
The Trojan Women stroke me as a modern play: a Greek taking the point of view of the defeated enemies, women even, in the founding epic of Greek culture.
25 centuries ago!!!
Some of the best commentary on classic Greek tragedy, unsurprisingly, can be found in Aristophanes when, for example, in “The Frogs”, Aeschylus and Euripides debate who was the better tragedian.
Okay, I think I've found the audience for one of the best jokes I've ever heard:
A man walked into a Greek tailor shop and handed the tailor a pair of pants.
The tailor looked at the pants and saw a long tear.
He said to the customer, "Euripides?"
Customer asked tailor, "Eumenides?"
Thank you, thank you. I'll show myself out now.
I never actually heard of the phrases “foreignization and domesticization.” But they make tones of sense.
Love that these videos can teach me so much while still making me laugh, appreciate your hard work.
As great writer Youtubos put it: 'Don't call a man who has subscribed fortunate, for he may never do, as the is told in every video.'
Any video-essay on his hate of Pasolini?
Mr. Moviewise, you are so fun! Thank you for this whirlwind visit to Greece. I just saw the restoration of Seven Samouri today, a masterclass in movie making. Perhaps, a trip to medieval Japan??
1:58 - "Prologue-like". Aww! You quoted Henry V. That warms the cockles of my wizened grinch heart.
That’s just great. Nothing like hot cockles.
Very interesting video. Thank you. No ones really done a video on Greek tragedy movies before. I’ve been fascinated by the topic before.
As an old Greek theatre whose directors have done some hands play, I appreciate this video
I will say, I love the Irene papas Electra. And I intend to watch the other tragedies too. It’s so fascinating to watch Greek stories told by actual Greeks. From the Greek perspective. Albeit with some changes.
And how different it is from how Hollywood tends to sanitize the stories.
14:19
Just when I thought 1961's Antigone wouldn't show up, there it is! Admittedly, I only stumbled across it online but I still enjoyed it. Plus, I was surprised to see Irene Papas since I only knew her from Moustapha Akkad's films.
Best Patreon pitch ever!
So when you watch Pasolini does it make you want to rip out your eyes so you don't see what you did like sleeping with your mother? If so you might be a Greek tragedy.
I'm not a screenwriter, but I do write / draw - and am perceptually at least 800,000 years old- so do think I owe tons of respect to the youth and their craft.
6:47 nice to have my teapot represented. I legit got up on reflex on hearing that since I wanted to make tea and it was heating up.
Speaking of Irene Papas and Ancient Greece, anyone had the chance to watch Franco Rossi’s 1968 TV miniseries "The Odyssey"? It was a pretty faithful and realistic adaptation of Homer’s epic. If I recall correctly, I think there was a "Greek chorus" of women in at least one scene.
This is wonderful. I'll leave it to the reader to guess why I might like this video. :)
(been using these names in online settings since not too long after reading several of these in college)
Thanks for putting Mighty Aphrodite at the front of this video. I love that movie. It's a Greek comedy, you might say.
Ah, but Pasolini did secure the service of none other than opera legend Maria Callas, Wiseman.
IMO Iphigenia is one of the best films ever, and the performances of Tatiana Papamoschou in the title role and Panos Mihalopoulos as Achilles are among the best in movie history.
Agreed. Cacoyannis's "Iphigenia" is the strongest adaptation of a Greek tragedy I've seen. Everything comes together perfectly in a way no other adaptation fully does. A Great film.
The ad and "like and subscribe" was amazingly well edited in, I laughed so hard
Sigh, we Greeks and our families.
Goodness! You are talented! I never dreamed a video essay on the classic Greek plays could be so hilarious! 😂
I love your style of presentation. Cant wait to see more.
That was one Hellas video
God be praised that you reminded me that I need to see 'The Trojan Women'!
Love me some Pasolini but this video is good too :)
I remember discovering the 1957 Oedipus Rex version during a school project and, just seeing those weird costumes, captivated me
You had me at Katharine Hepburn! I'll have to see The Trojan Women.
It's worth the effort to find it to watch.
My favorite filmed tragedy would be peters Halls run of the Oresteia from 1983. Its on TH-cam, though it is not a movie but a recording of the stage performance it utilizes the striking and gutteral translation of Tony Harrison, one you wont be able to find online on a pdf! I would also like to mention Peter Dodd who did a short sort of abridged animated short of Prometheus Bound.
So, I guess we won't be holding our breath for a review of Salo...
One of my favorite adaptations of Greek tragedy is the gospel musical "Gospel at Colonus" which was filmed for TV and available on TH-cam.
Your videos are great, glad I can get to one so quickly! Definitely taking some inspiration for some of my editing for future videos, lol
Greek theater is history's best sober acid trip, hell yeah.
not so sober, they actually used a drink called kykeon, which features ergot, from which lsd was originally extracted
@@arbuz_kawon well in my own case I'm sober
I absolutely loooove Pasolini
You had me at "Elektra"! How do I even know about this play's existence? Because Captain Marvel's Brie Larson is going to star in this exact play in London next year. ❤
The new series about the Menendez brothers uses a gossip journalist (Nathan Lane) and his dinner guests as a Greek chorus. It was a pretty inspired way to use the classical convention.
Cottafavi’s translation is spot on, that’s exactly what he says
But what’s wrong with Pasolini? He may be boring, I’ll give you that
This feels like an Aristotle lecture
❤❤❤ commenting cuz this should have been atop my recommendeds
Such a subtle sponsor transition 😂
"I can hardly WAIT for the comments saying, 'you just don't get it."
I'm going to keep it real with you, Moviewise. You are probably the only one here who has seen Straub-Huillet films. And from the sounds of it, rightfully so.
Master of subtitles
Imagine my surprise when a Greek chorus showed up in Combien tu m'aimes?
WHAT!?!? You didn't cover Spike Lee's classic Chi-Raq, the retelling of Aristophanes' Lysistrata. I'm actually shocked as this to me was one of the more creative ways of bringing Greek plays into the modern era.
I love this title.
Reminds me of a certain guy who only makes Tarantino and Cohen brothers videos.
CinemaStink or something.
I saw this production of Oedipus in a college literature class 40 years ago.
It'll be interesting to see the young Pasolini's take on Odysseus' RETURN, later this year. Il Ritorno, dir. Pasolini; Binoche, Fiennes, et al.
Greeks created drama? The Gilgameshy Players would like a word. 😂
William Shatner hasn't changed a bit....
His waistline might disagree. Happens to most of us.
Not a fan of how you casually disparaged Hölderlin. In spite of his late onset mental illness, he is universally recognised as one of Germany's greatest poets, and his Greek translations in particular are seen as authoritative.
Man! How can you be so harsh on Pasolini??😭😭
It's all Greek to me. Literally & figuratively.
Suddenly I remember the birds in _Rango._
The subscribe to my patrion quote killed me
7:47 this tickles my gen z absurdist humour nerve
I realize this is my modern mind, but one reason I have trouble with classic tragedies, from Eurypides to Shakespeare, is that they require (demand!) a great deal of pathos on the part of the audience for the situation of the particular characters, but I just always find myself wanting to shout, "well then, stop behaving like idiots!"
It's like the 20th time you see a party split up in a slasher horror movie. You just don't care about the characters anymore because they act as if they *want* to be murdered and the plot is simply mechanically moving along to accommodate them.
In these tragedies, the characters virtually demand to meet tragedy and death. At a certain point, am I still the bad guy for just wanting to leave them to it? But the play demands I continue to give a crap.
Maybe don't try to outsmart Fate and the gods when they decree that X is going to happen. Don't compare yourself to gods who are arbitrarily powerful and demonstrably petty. Don't try to bargain with Hades, and if you do, *follow the friggin' rules* ! Be okay with someone "someday" coming along to take your throne. No one is king forever. Be nice to your family. Try actually communicating. And just generally, don't be an arrogant, presumptuous jerk.
Have these people never *seen* a play before? Do you want a tragedy? 'Cause this is how you get a tragedy, folks!
Conversely though, even if a given character behaved in a good and wise way, tragedy will still tragedy. It's a defining feature.
In a universe governed by truly arbitrary forces, it's hard to get invested. "Yes, your life sucks and there's nothing you can do about it. Definitely let me hear about it for the next four hours or so."
So, is the lesson "be wise and avoid tragedy," or "life is arbitrary, so just do the best you can?" Seems a bit contradictory.
At 13:44 man falls down dead with hands to his side. Next shot he's on the ground with hands above his head.
At 15:03 what film is it I can’t find out which one of the Greek films is being talked about
7:40 what's the song
Looks like an old nightmare I had.
I'd expect anything associated with Brecht to consist of vomit and farts delivered by a hunchbacked sailor with one tooth.
See seem to have seen/read other parts of his work that I did.
Someone's not a fan of the working classes, it seems.
You should tackle the cinema of different countries, itsly, japan, iran, poland, etc...
What do you think of Fellini Satyricon?
I found it very indulgent. It's one of the most indulgent movies he ever made. The key word is indulgent. 😉
I’ve seen/own Elektra on dvd. Still want to see the other two he made.
The masks make more sense than watching the same face play many roles and attempting to convince yourself that that person is all those characters. Penguin effectively does the same thing. It’s just a very realistic mask
All translations are adaptions. It’s impossible to get a perfect facsimile from one language to another. Meaning is more important
Wish I wasn’t fluent in Italian rn💀
Seeing the 1957 Oedipus Rex closed a circle I'd long held onto. This is the version of the play Tom Lehrer was referring to in his introduction to his "Theme tune" for that particular "flick"..
th-cam.com/video/mScdJURKGWM/w-d-xo.html
Please do a video on Brian De Palma. NB: he's Tarantino's favourite director.
5:28 😂😂😂😂😂
Hey man. Would you know where one could go to find out about good euro made for tv films? Speaking as such an astute cinephile paisano as yourself?
Closest I can come are the old BBC Plays for Today. Mike Leigh, Ken Loach and, best of all, Alan Clarke got their starts there and did amazing work. Leigh's 'Hard Labour' is a standout. Most of the 'plays' are really films, shot on location.
My Big Fat Greek Tragedy
Moviewise, so funny.
How often do you get to use the phrase "a couple dozen centuries?"
The title and thumbnail have the makings of million views video
I always forget that this is another channel by dovahhatty
I'm studying their plays. Wrong elective.
The BBC recordings of Peter Hall's theatrical Oresteia from 1983 are worth a watch - th-cam.com/video/3UyouI7BUsI/w-d-xo.html
I thought I was the only one who disliked Pasolini as a director! He might have been a great writer (contributed to the screenplay of Nights of Cabiria, one of my favorites), but had no mastering of cinema language whatsoever. His movies look like made by a cinema student, and a bad one.
Is the narrator Dovahhatty?
I've been wondering this
Thanks for your work. Check out Medea (2021) by Zeldovich, if you haven’t yet.
what makes you watch movies from artists you don't like?
How would you know if you don’t watch at least a few of their movies?
i agree but in some cases like pasolini i guess you'll know what you think after salò and gospel according to matthew, i personally would have stopped there
Euripides, eupayferdes
Hexameter as in 6
THE PROBLEM with adaptations, is that we dont see Ancient Greeks as normal Humans like us: we too much base on the Statues and scenes from pots that were static of course...
- People were not static, they did not speak like stiff automatons, and those words were common words, what the normal people used. I guess actors were much more bodily expressive than us, with no cameras and effects whatever.
See our misconceptions: we thought till recently that statues were pure white elegant marble....
Adaptations with surealism are just incompetent, or without budget
Some movies/series about i.e. 1800 England are much more realistic recently, instead of rigid and stiff like previous decades. Hope this expands.
An anthropologist, with a historian and an archaiologist, would adapt these Plays better.
Though you have to take into consideration that plays, especially tragedies, in ancient (archaic and classical) Greece were actually religious rituals. So they had to be played with solemnity and hieratic attitude, since they showed the myths of the fathers. With the evolution of costumes and culture, they became more and more stories about human flaws and contrasts.
@@Laurelin70 Please, is this true that they started as religious rituals? I want to learn more about this.
I also understand that Rituals should be Stiff in our modern minds, but thats my point, that we dont know their ways of expression - the people that made Dionysus a god, could not be stiff I guess, and would use expresionism to the utmost....maybe!
@@realfake8269 According to Aristotle, at the origin of tragedy would stand the rites in honor of Dyonisus. And even if other more modern scholars don't share the same hypotesis about the etymology of the words, they are still convinced about the religious origin of the theatre (just recently visited an exhibition here in Rome about that, and the guide said that at first theatrical plays, especially tragedies, were represented during religious festival or holidays).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_tragedy
No nod to Anouilh?
That rabbit hole was enticing but much too deep. With Anouilh I’d end up talking about Giraudoux and Cocteau (all Jeans) and Goethe, and Racine and Corneille and Seneca.
8:43 Wrong ! There is also a french film made in the 1950’s for television of « The Persians » by Aeschylus. It’s even uploaded to TH-cam: th-cam.com/video/UEm0b7vUDJc/w-d-xo.htmlsi=QHYhNjFlN9CeeNPN
I am forever glad that Europe's holiest family was Jewish.
Petition to make a video on Mr.Bean.
Haven't you watched this version of Oedipus? It's very good.
Christopher Plummer and Orson Welles. th-cam.com/video/H4jPcyBu0Rw/w-d-xo.htmlsi=41hm80pGD9_6Eql8
@Dovahhatty has a second job!
I never heard of Vittorio Cottafavi. I’ll have to check him out. I love budget enforced creativity.