THE TROJAN WOMEN (1971)

Considering I have a Bachelor's degree and a Master's Degree in English (and I am A.B.D to boot, having passed my Ph.D orals without finishing a dissertation), I am at sea when it comes to the ancient Greek playwrights. Though I have read several of the classic plays (Oedipus Rex, Antigone, The Bacchae), I don't really know my Sophocles from my Aristophanes. This film by Michael Cacoyannis is based on a play by Euripides set after the fall of Troy (see Homer's Iliad for backstory), centered on the fates of the women left behind after their city was burned and their men captured or killed. Filmed outdoors (on location in Spain), the movie has a realistic look but in terms of acting, it's very stagy, consisting largely of fairly static scenes with the main characters loudly proclaiming their grief and frustration to a chorus of sympathetic women. The story focuses on Hecuba, former Queen of Troy (Katherine Hepburn, pictured), who is waiting on word from the Greek king about the fate of her family. Her husband is dead; her daughter Cassandra (Genevieve Bujold), a prophet who has gone mad, is slated to become a royal concubine; Andromache (Vanessa Redgrave) the wife of Hecuba's slain son Hector, fears that her young son will be put to death so no legitimate line of royal lineage will exist. Meanwhile, Helen of Troy (Irene Papas), whom the other women blame for the war, is being held prisoner. In the best scene of the movie, Helen claims that the gods are at fault, but Hecuba rebuts her, holding her responsible for her own actions. In the end, only Hecuba is left as the last of Troy is burned, wailing with the nameless chorus of women over their future enslavement. The tension between realism in setting and theatricality in delivery never resolves itself, so all the moaning and declaiming is highlighted, remaining artificial and melodramatic. Had this been filmed as a staged play on a proscenium set, it might have worked. Bujold gets short shrift here, in a relatively small role that is mostly a tepid mad scene. Redgrave is OK, but Hepburn, being Hepburn, manages to shine, reining in the histrionics more than her fellow actors. Her scene mentioned above with Papas is riveting. Unfortunately, little else in the film rises to that height. The only males in the cast are Brian Blessed and Patrick Magee who are fine. The concept of the chorus of women works fairly well. The director claims that this was meant primarily as an anti-war statement, but partly because all the war scenes occur before the action of the film, that sentiment is not effectively delivered. I would recommend this only to classicists, Hepburn fans, or viewers looking for a novelty. [DVD]