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Phaedra

Screening on Film
Directed by Jules Dassin.
With Melina Mercouri, Anthony Perkins, Raf Vallone.
US/Greece, 1961, 35mm, black & white, 116 min.

In this contemporary reworking of Eurpides’ Hippolytus, Melina Mercouri plays the wife of a Greek shipping magnate (Vallone) who finds herself inextricably enmeshed in an overpowering love for her husband’s son (Perkins). In a performance the New York Times called “luminous with fervor and honesty,” Mercouri conveys a range of agonizing emotions—from irrepressible passion to bitter jealously to despair—that extends the tradition of the great Phaedras of the stage to Dassin’s highly expressive screen. Noted for its striking Mediterranean locales, Dassin captures the Hellenic setting with his characteristic visual strength.

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