Phaedra vs Hippolytus

Euripides vs. Dassin The classic classic legend of Phaedra probes the sad consequences that occur when a woman becomes sexually obsessed with her stepson. In Phaedra (1962) managing director Jules Dassin presents Phaedra as a woman overwhelmed by passions she heapnot control. This follows the interpretation of Phaedra developed by Euripides, who broke with older versions in which Phaedra was an evil sensualist seeking to corrupt her naive stepson. Dassin adds political punch to the film by exploring the fantastic lives enjoyed by selected postping families. Where as Hippolytus takes place in Troezen, a city in the northeastern Peloponnese.In the Hippolytus, Phaedras husband is serving a year of voluntary eject for murdering the Pallantids. Where as in Phaedra, he is a very wealthy and resign man. A majority of Hippolytus revolves around the goddess Aphrodite. Where as in Phaedra there is no gods or goddesss. Euripides play Hippolytus was written in 428 B. C. , and ever since it has been regarded as angiotensin-converting enzyme of the great classical works. In his treatment of the Phaedra myth, Euripides presents Phaedra in a allege of mental anguish and exhaustion brought closely by her commence it off for Hippolytus, which she strives to conceal.Euripides frames the events of the valet de chambre characters with the presence of the gods Aphrodite and Artemis. Euripides Athenian audience was therefore provided with prior knowledge about Phaedras guilty secret, for her passion is described as being impose by the god Aphrodite. Euripides portrays Aphrodite as a terrifying and vindictive deity, unalike the voluptuous woman often depicted in visual art. Her disruption monologue conveys an imperious attitude, and she sees the ground and its people as her domain.Because Aphrodite is the goddess of love, her perception of the world seems reasonable, since her power extends to the everyday lives of the mortals over whom she rules. This is not, howeve r, the benign emotion that today we great power associate with the word love. Rather, Euripides depicts erotic love as a overpowering and destructive force. As Aphrodite states, those who fail to accord the proper respect to her allow for face obliteration. The terrifying power of love is intrinsic to understanding Aphrodites anger at Hippolytus and the development of the play.Aphrodite directs her fury at Hippolytus because he refuses to venerate her. He is, as he explains in Scene I, not fire in erotic love and consequently reveres the goddess of love from a broad way off. He instead remains chaste and worships Artemis exclusively. This, of course, infuriates Aphrodite who vows to punish him for his blasphemy. Because he will not honor erotic love, she decides that its power will unmake him, thereby proving her supremacy over humanity to all those who hear of Hippolytus destruction.Her vehicle for punishing him is Phaedra, his stepmother, who thus becomes a victim of l ove. Phaedras position in the play as the agent through whom Aphrodite exacts her retaliation creates an ethical problem. fit to Aphrodites scheme, Phaedra must die, only if unlike Hippolytus, she has not committed either offenses against the goddess of love. Phaedra therefore becomes a victim of loves power, a gazump bewitched into loving her stepson who then commits suicide out of shame. Yet as Aphrodite explains, Her suffering does not weight in the scale so overmuch that I should let my enemies go untouched. Reconciling Aphrodites need for revenge and Phaedras innocence is an interpretive challenge of the play, and Euripides does not provide an free answer. Out of this tension arises a central conflict of the play, specifically concerning the kind between men and gods during the period in which Euripides wrote. This relationship seems tenuous at best and bears little resemblance to modern perspectives on religion. As such, an essential question to consider is what respons ibilities gods had to people and people to gods.Euripidess tragedy offers a few in hands into this relationship. As evidenced by Aphrodites reaction to Hippolytus exclusive devotion to Artemis, humans were to worship all of the gods. This relationship, however, does not seem reciprocal. Rather, Aphrodites manipulation of Phaedra indicates that the gods had few obligations to humans. Free from the burdens of protecting men, the gods used men as their playthings while humans had to worship the gods to placate them and avoid incurring their wrath.Dassins Phaedra is the forty-something, second wife of shipping magnate Thanos Kyrilis, who wishes to reconcile with his estranged son Alexis, an art student bread and stillter in capital of the United Kingdom. The athletic and handsome Thanos is a cunning businessman involved in international commerce, but he is likable and adores his wife. He gives Phaedra expensive gifts and names his new prize ship in her honor. Phaedra is not ignored or abused by an untempting or deceitful husband. Dassin adds political punch to the film by exploring the luxurious lives enjoyed by elite shipping families.This is not done in a heavy-handed manner. The lavish villas, yachts, and fashionable attire of the super rich atomic number 18 simply allowed to speak for themselves without any editorial grumbling by Greek commoners. Dassin takes a further jab at the Greek shippers by prospect up marital relationships between his characters that parallel real-life marriages involving the Onassis and Niarchos shipping clans. The tragedy takes stool when Thanos cajoles a reluctant Phaedra to deliver a message to Alexis in London that his father wants his twenty-four-year-old son to be at his side.From their first encounter, Phaedra and Alexis engage in a playful flirtation inappropriate to their relationship. Alexis invites Phaedra to meet his girl, which turns out to be a pricey sports railway car in a dealership window. Their empathy, however , leads to Alexis run into with his father in Paris. When business needs require Thanos to leave for bare-ass York City, Phaedra, persuades Alexis to remain. The supposedly mounting passion between Mercouri and Perkins wants chemistry. All the sexual susceptibility comes from the sultry Phaedra and her attraction to the bland Alexis is inexplicable.Nor is Dassins camera effective in addressing this sexual void. The films big sex scene is an uninventive sequence of blurred shots of the embracing couple punctuated by shots of a rain down storm at the window, a blazing fireplace, and glowing candles. After living together in Paris for more than a week, Alexis asks Phaedra to declare her love openly and return with him to London. Phaedra, however, feels compelled to rejoin her husband on the island of Hydra. Fearful of her lack of self control, she tells Alexis, Dont come. Greece brings no respite to Phaedras emotions.Although distillery yearning for Alexis, she is tormented by h er sense of shame and deceit. Her only confidant is Anna (Olympia Papoudaka), her aging personal maid, who is distraught by Phaedras anguish. Annas emotions have homoerotic aspects that feel far more genuine than the emotions Alexis has projected. The women take siestas together, but their sexual intimacy remains limited to the adoring Annas caresses. Thanos informs Alexis that the car he so admires is waiting for him in Hydra. Alexis demands to know what Phaedra desires him to do.The increasingly coseismal Phaedra reverses what she had said earlier and implores Alexis to come as soon as possible, but her plans go awry when Alexis hews ever closer to his father while befitting ever more wary of her. The sexual dynamics intensify when Ercy, Alexiss beautiful second cousin, a woman his own age, falls in love with him. Thanos and his circle are delighted at the prospect of a marriage that would further unite the shipping families. A now dour and possessive Phaedra stands between Ale xis and all that is normal. Alexis reacts by playing the role of a carefree party boy at the local seaside tavern. He goes off with the first available woman, an act designed to cool Ercys ardor and belittle Phaedra. The film reaches its climax when the luxury ship named Phaedra, seen launched in the films opening scenes, sinks, killing most of its crew. Phaedra, obsessed by her own agenda, arrives at Thanoss offices in the midst of the crisis. Ironically dress in white, she pushes her way through black-clad women anxious to know the fate of their men. preoccupied to the grief around her, Phaedra-in-white reveals her secret love to Thanos.An enraged Thanos manages to restrain himself from spectacular her, but beats Alexis viciously, ordering him, as he did Phaedra, to leave his sight forever. The blood-soaked Alexis returns to the family villa for a last embrace of his girl. Phaedra appears at the garage door and tells him they can now live openly as lovers he replies that he wi shes Phaedra dead. The rejected Phaedra returns to the main house where she takes an overdose of sleeping pills while the now delirious Alexis, listening to music by Bach, drives his girl over a cliff.