From the distinguished Classical Presences series at Oxford University Press comes a new volume of thirteen essays on the representation of ancient Greek women in cinema. In his introduction, N. provides a thoughtful explanation of the scholarly goals of the collection in combining the theoretical and methodological approaches of two major interdisciplinary fields: classical reception studies and gender studies. While many of the screen texts under consideration here – from mainstream Hollywood movies to independent films to television productions – have been explored in-depth elsewhere, the innovation of this volume is to gather together and juxtapose these cinematic portrayals of Greek women in thematic units, allowing the reader to trace not only their reception history across time, place and genre but also to appreciate ‘the mutability and continuous adaptability of their screen image’ (p. 3). In doing so, the volume for the most part eschews tiresome debates about historical accuracy and faithfulness to ancient sources, as it engages in the project of ‘enriching our knowledge of the ways in which the ancient world is recreated, used, and (almost always) abused in modern popular culture’ (pp. 2–3). Many but not all the essays are illustrated, and there is an extensive bibliography; but the lack of a comprehensive filmography is a shortcoming in an overall praiseworthy book.
The essays are arranged thematically into five units focused on a particular Greek woman or group of women, and contributors embrace diverse comparative perspectives to explore the figure's depiction in various screen texts. The first section centres on Helen of Troy, née Sparta. B. Vivante's detailed essay ‘Gazing at Helen’ analyses the different aesthetic strategies for the manufacture of Helen's image in two films: Robert Wise's Helen of Troy (1956) and Michael Cacoyannis' The Trojan Women (1971). Recalibrating the critical tools of L. Mulvey's cinematic ‘gaze’ theory (‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ [1975]), Vivante argues that Helen on screen focalises three constructs of the gaze: the camera lingers on her iconic beauty, but the gazing (male) spectator is weakened, while Helen's own (female) gaze projects her power. R. Blondell's ‘Third Cheerleader from the Left’, on the portrayal of a lacklustre Helen in Wolfgang Petersen's Troy (2004), is reprinted here from its original publication in Classical Receptions Journal (2009). Although this essay is one of the best examinations of the commercial and political reasons the filmmakers chose to depict a trivialised Helen in the movie Troy, a brand new piece – perhaps comparing Petersen's Helen to her similarly disempowered age-mate in the Helen of Troy television miniseries (2003) and considering what that representational tactic tells us about early twenty-first century notions of beauty and sexual power – would have paired well with the first chapter.
In the next section, three essays examine both epic and dramatic incarnations of Medea on screen. K. Ormand, ‘Medea's Erotic Text’, takes a fresh look at the role of Medea as passive object of desire in Don Chaffey's Jason and the Argonauts (1963), unpacking the subtle ways in which the dynamic agency and trangressiveness of her character so familiar from the literary sources are suppressed and contained within the androcentric narrative of the movie's heroic adventures. S. Shapiro's elucidation of Pier Paolo Pasoloni's Medea (1969) as ‘A Twentieth Century Tragedy’ demonstrates the film is more than just a peculiar adaptation of Euripides' play, as it manifests the structuralist paradigms of ancient religious ritual developed by historian Mircea Eliade. Shapiro argues that the film's Medea embodies in symbolic terms the forces of irrational nature, both destructive and regenerative, while Jason represents the hyper-rationalisation of the modern world. A.M. Baertschi, ‘Rebel and Martyr’, traces the inherent ‘theatricality’ in Lars von Trier's lesser-known television movie Medea (1988), and finds a radically new interpretation of Euripides' tragedy that reveals Medea's desperate vengeance and infanticide as emblematic of the universal suffering of all women.
The third section turns to the screening of Penelope. J. Paul's insightful ‘Madonna and Whore’ transcends the stark dichotomy of its title to investigate the mapping of gender roles in Mario Camerini's epic film Ulisse (1954), in which actress Silvana Mangano plays both Penelope, wife of Ulysses, and Circe, the enchantress who delays his return home. Paul evaluates the casting of Mangano in this dual role as a representational strategy popular in Italian cinema of the era, used to highlight the complexity and thus authenticity of ‘woman’. In ‘Why is Penelope Still Waiting?’ E. Hall finds fault with Greta Scacchi's emotionless performance as Odysseus' wife in Andrei Konchalovsky's television miniseries The Odyssey (1997). Despite the ‘cultural penetration of the Odyssey’ (p. 170) and its persistent influence on cinema, and even as the vitality of Penelope's character remains prevalent in fiction, theatre and poetry, Hall points to numerous other recent Odyssey-inspired films that also fail to meet the standards of the epic source material in their inadequate depictions of Penelope's moral agency and narrative significance.
The next section introduces a selection of women from Greek myth and drama. A. Pomeroy's lively ‘The Women of Ercole’ explores the portrayal of female characters who interact with Hercules in Italian peplum films, such as the Amazon queen Antea and the princess Iole, and identifies the aesthetic and socio-cultural influences that swayed the filmmakers' decisions to cast actresses of particular hair colouring and other physical attributes in each of the roles. A. Bakogianni's well-researched ‘Annihilating Clytemnestra’ links the anti-war sentiment of Cacoyannis' film Iphigenia (1977) to that of its ancient source, Euripides' Iphigeneia at Aulis, noting how the film further emphasises the bond between Clytemnestra and Iphigenia, and the mother's inconsolable loss of her child, to evoke the trauma of the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus. H.R. Marshall's essay on Tony Harrison's film/poem Prometheus (1998), a British television production that draws on Aeschylus' play Prometheus Bound, also situates the film in its historical and political moment as a commentary on the miners' strike of 1984–85. Marshall describes how the chorus of Nereids, here shown as doomed fish factory workers, and the character of Io as a frantic mother, articulate in virtual silence their shared anguish at the devastation of their community.
The final section veers into historical territory. N., ‘Between Family and Nation’, looks at the contemporary socio-political overtones in the portrayal of Gorgo, wife of the Spartan King Leonidas, in two Hollywood productions, Rudolph Maté's epic film The 300 Spartans (1962) and Zack Snyder's blockbuster movie 300 (2007). While the Spartan queen's image in the earlier film is domesticated to suit Cold War ideologies, the more recent Gorgo is depicted as an ‘emancipated woman’ (p. 277) whose outspoken autonomy and equality with her husband and male peers locates her as an idealised symbol of the freedoms of modern western societies. K. Day assesses the historical authenticity of ‘Representing Olympias’, mother of Alexander the Great, in two epic spectaculars, Robert Rossen's Alexander the Great (1956) and Oliver Stone's Alexander (2004). Day argues that Rossen's film comes closer to an accurate depiction of the historical Olympias' role in her son's career, and the life of Macedonian court women more generally; and although Stone's portrayal of Olympias is less successful, the film does a better job of conceptualising ancient gender and sexuality for modern audiences. L. Llewellyn-Jones's meticulous ‘An Almost All Greek Thing’ delineates the artistic and commercial reasons for the elision of Greekness in the narrative and visual representation of Cleopatra in the twentieth-century cinematic imagination. As the last Ptolemaic queen, Cleopatra's Hellenistic bona fides are undeniable; yet the glamorous costumes and set designs in such famous Hollywood productions as Cecil B. DeMille's Cleopatra (1934) and Joseph L. Mankiewicz's Cleopatra (1963) favour a Pharaonic aesthetic dating back to the New Kingdom, serving as visual cues to mark Cleopatra and her courtiers as ‘Egyptian’ in sharp contrast to the Romans with whom she collided.
This new collection makes a valuable contribution to current scholarship on classical reception studies and gender studies. While a more explicit distinction between the genres of epic cinema and film adaptations of Greek drama would have been welcome, these thirteen case studies of screen texts from the last century will offer useful strategies to interpret, for example, the martial prowess and lethal sexuality of Artemisia in 300: Rise of an Empire (2014) or the sleek athleticism of Atalanta in Hercules (2014), as the field of classical receptions onscreen continues to move forward.
