Phaedra vs Hippolytus

Euripides vs. Dassin The classic Greek legend of Phaedra probes the tragic consequences that occur when a woman becomes sexually obsessed with her stepson. In Phaedra (1962) director Jules Dassin presents Phaedra as a woman overwhelmed by passions she cannot 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 innocent stepson. Dassin adds political punch to the film by exploring the luxurious lives enjoyed by elite shipping 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 exile for murdering the Pallantids. Where as in Phaedra, he is a very wealthy and free man. A majority of Hippolytus revolves around the goddess Aphrodite. Where as in Phaedra there is no gods or goddess’s. Euripides’ play Hippolytus was written in 428 B. C. , and ever since it has been regarded as one of the great classical works. In his treatment of the Phaedra myth, Euripides presents Phaedra in a state of mental anguish and exhaustion brought about by her love for Hippolytus, which she strives to conceal.Euripides frames the events of the human characters with the presence of the gods Aphrodite and Artemis. Euripides’ Athenian audience was therefore provided with prior knowledge about Phaedra’s guilty secret, for her ‘passion’ is described as being imposed by the god Aphrodite. Euripides portrays Aphrodite as a terrifying and vindictive deity, unlike the voluptuous woman often depicted in visual art. Her opening monologue conveys an imperious attitude, and she sees the world 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, however, the benign emotion that today we m ight associate with the word â€Å"love. † Rather, Euripides depicts erotic love as a consuming and destructive force. As Aphrodite states, those who fail to accord the proper respect to her will face obliteration. The terrifying power of love is essential to understanding Aphrodite’s anger at Hippolytus and the development of the play.Aphrodite directs her fury at Hippolytus because he refuses to worship her. He is, as he explains in Scene I, not interested in erotic love and consequently reveres the goddess of love â€Å"from a long 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 destroy 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 love. Phaedra ’s position in the play as the agent through whom Aphrodite exacts her revenge creates an ethical problem. According to Aphrodite’s scheme, Phaedra must die, but unlike Hippolytus, she has not committed any offenses against the goddess of love. Phaedra therefore becomes a victim of love’s power, a pawn bewitched into loving her stepson who then commits suicide out of shame. Yet as Aphrodite explains, â€Å"Her suffering does not weight in the scale so much that I should let my enemies go untouched. Reconciling Aphrodite’s need for revenge and Phaedra’s innocence is an interpretive challenge of the play, and Euripides does not provide an easy answer. Out of this tension arises a central conflict of the play, specifically concerning the relationship 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 responsibilities gods had to people and people to gods.Euripides’s tragedy offers a few insights into this relationship. As evidenced by Aphrodite’s reaction to Hippolytus’ exclusive devotion to Artemis, humans were to worship all of the gods. This relationship, however, does not seem reciprocal. Rather, Aphrodite’s 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.Dassin’s Phaedra is the forty-something, second wife of shipping magnate Thanos Kyrilis, who wishes to reconcile with his estranged son Alexis, an art student living in London. 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 hono r. Phaedra is not ignored or abused by an unattractive 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 are simply allowed to speak for themselves without any editorial grumbling by Greek commoners. Dassin takes a further jab at the Greek shippers by setting up marital relationships between his characters that parallel real-life marriages involving the Onassis and Niarchos shipping clans. The tragedy takes form 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 â€Å"girl,† which turns out to be a pricey sports car in a dealership window. Thei r empathy, however, leads to Alexis meeting with his father in Paris. When business needs require Thanos to leave for New York City, Phaedra, persuades Alexis to remain. The supposedly mounting passion between Mercouri and Perkins lacks chemistry. All the sexual energy comes from the sultry Phaedra and her attraction to the bland Alexis is inexplicable.Nor is Dassin’s camera effective in addressing this sexual void. The film’s big sex scene is an unimaginative sequence of blurred shots of the embracing couple punctuated by shots of a rain 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, â€Å"Don’t come. † Greece brings no respite to Phaedra’s emotions.Although still yearni ng for Alexis, she is tormented by her sense of shame and deceit. Her only confidant is Anna (Olympia Papoudaka), her aging personal maid, who is distraught by Phaedra’s anguish. Anna’s 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 Anna’s 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 unstable 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 becoming ever more wary of her. The sexual dynamics intensify when Ercy, Alexis’s 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 sullen and possessive Phaedra stands between Alexis and all that is â€Å"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 Ercy’s ardor and belittle Phaedra. The film reaches its climax when the luxury ship named Phaedra, seen launched in the film’s opening scenes, sinks, killing most of its crew. Phaedra, obsessed by her own agenda, arrives at Thanos’s offices in the midst of the crisis. Ironically clad in white, she pushes her way through black-clad women anxious to know the fate of their men. Oblivious to the grief around her, Phaedra-in-white reveals her secret love to Thanos.An enraged Thanos manages to restrain himself from striking 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 â€Å"girl. † Phae dra appears at the garage door and tells him they can now live openly as lovers; he replies that he wishes Phaedra dead. The rejected Phaedra returns to the main house where she takes an overdose of sleeping pills while the now frenzied Alexis, listening to music by Bach, drives his â€Å"girl† over a cliff.