Classical Myth & Culture in the CinemaMartin M. Winkler The Katabasis theme in modern cinema / Erling B. Holtsmark -- Verbal Odysseus: narrative strategy in the Odyssey and in The usual suspects / Hanna M. Roisman -- Michael Cacoyannis and Irene Papas on Greek tragedy / Marianne McDonald, Martin M. Winkler -- Eye of the camera, eye of the victim: Iphigenia by Euripides and Cacoyannis -- Iphigenia: a visual essay / Michael Cacoyannis -- Tragic features in John Ford's The searchers / Martin M. Winkler -- An American tragedy: Chinatown / Mary-Kay Gamel -- Tricksters and typists: 9 to 5 as Aristophanic comedy / James R. Brown -- Ancient poetics and Eisenstein's films / J.K. Newman -- Film sense in the Aeneid / Fred Mench -- Peter Greenaway's The cook, the thief, his wife and her lover: a Cockney procne / Janice F. Siegel -- The social ambience of Petronius' Satyricon and Fellini Satyricon / J.P. Sullivan -- Star wars and the Roman empire / Martin M. Winkler -- Teaching classical myth and confronting contemporary myths / Peter W. Rose -- The sounds of cinematic antiquity / Jon Solomon. |
Contents
| 3 | |
| 23 | |
| 51 | |
| 72 | |
| 90 | |
A Visual Essay | 102 |
Tragic Features in John Fords The Searchers | 118 |
Chinatown | 148 |
Ancient Poetics and Eisensteins Films | 193 |
Film Sense in the Aeneid | 219 |
Peter Greenaways The Cook The Thief His Wife | 233 |
The Social Ambience of Petronius Satyricon | 258 |
Star Wars and the Roman Empire | 272 |
Teaching Classical Myth and Confronting Contemporary | 291 |
The Sounds of Cinematic Antiquity | 319 |
Index | 339 |
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Common terms and phrases
Achilles Aeneas Aeneid Agamemnon Albert American ancient antiquity Aristophanes Aristotle artistic audience Ben-Hur Cacoyannis Cacoyannis's Calchas camera characters Chinatown CINEMA CLASSICAL MYTH Clytemnestra Comedy comic contemporary critical Cyclopes Darth Vader death Debbie drama Eisenstein emotional epic essay Ethan Euripides example eyes father Fellini Satyricon film film noir film's genre Georgina Gittes Greece Greek myth Greek tragedy Greenaway hero hero's Homer human husband images Iphigenia John Ford katabasis katabatic Keaton Keyser Soze killed Kujan later literary literature Lucas's Lysistrata Marcus Martin Michael modern Mulwray murder MYTH & CULTURE mythic mythology narrative Odysseus Oedipus Ovid parallels Petronius Phaeacians Philomela play plot Poetics political popular Procne quotation reveals Roman Empire Rome Rózsa Scar scene score sexual shot Soze stage Star Wars story Tereus theme tion tradition tragic Trojan truth Turnus University Press Verbal victim Vietnam viewer visual western wife women words York
Popular passages
Page 286 - If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus.
Page 12 - A modern Plato would compare his Cave to an underground cinema, where the audience watch the play of shadows thrown by the film passing before a light at their backs. The film itself is only an image of "real" things and events in the world outside the cinema. For the film Plato has to substitute the clumsier apparatus of a procession of artificial objects carried on their heads by persons who are merely part of the machinery, providing for the movement of the objects and the sounds whose echo the...
Page 16 - One might generalize by saying: the technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition. By making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence.
Page 286 - In the second century of the Christian Era, the empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilized portion of mankind.
Page 16 - Eisenstein — while asseverating the fundamentally intellectual nature of viewing: ". . .our cinema is not altogether without parents and without pedigree, without a past, without the traditions and rich cultural heritage of the past epochs.
Page 58 - ... crops in season, and there are meadow lands near the shores of the gray sea, well watered and soft; there could be grapes grown there endlessly, and there is smooth land for plowing, men could reap a full harvest always in season, since there is very rich subsoil. Also there is an easy harbor, with no need for a hawser nor anchor stones to be thrown ashore nor cables to make fast; one could just run ashore and wait for the time when the sailors' desire stirred them to go and the right winds were...
Page 227 - Ausoniis, donec versas ad litora puppis respiciunt totumque adlabi classibus aequor. ardet apex capiti cristisque a vertice flamma 270 funditur et vastos umbo vomit aureus ignis. non secus ac liquida si quando nocte cometae sanguinei lugubre rubent aut Sirius ardor, ille sitim morbosque ferens mortalibus aegris, nascitur et laevo contristat lumine caelum.
Page 264 - ... dissipation, he was not regarded as an extravagant sensualist, but as one who made luxury a fine art. His conversation and his way of life were unconventional with a certain air of nonchalance, and they charmed people all the more by seeming so unstudied. Yet as proconsul in Bithynia and later as consul, he showed himself a vigorous and capable administrator. His subsequent return to his old habits, whether this was real or apparent, led to his admission to the small circle of Nero's intimates,...
Page 16 - It is only very thoughtless and presumptuous people who can erect laws and an esthetic for cinema, proceeding from premises of some incredible virgin-birth of this art! Let Dickens and the whole ancestral array, going back as far as the Greeks and Shakespeare, be superfluous reminders that both Griffith and our cinema prove our origins to be not solely as of Edison and his fellow inventors, but as based on an enormous cultured past; each part of this past in its own moment of world history has moved...
Page 148 - In The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981.