ABSTRACT
At the outset of this chapter, it should be stated that these films do not provide for, say, the student of classical drama a way into the plays on which they appear to be based. There is no possibility of confusion between drama and film in any of these cases, so that to dismiss the films as betrayals of their originals seems to miss the point. None of them purports to be the original in transposed form. The Cacoyannis films, and the Tzavellas Antigone, seem much more likely to raise problems for those who believe that they are watching a relatively faithful transcription of the original play. Even with The Trojan Women, in which much of the dialogue and the basic situations of the original play are retained, such apparently insignificant choices as the ‘objective’ prologue in place of the play's squabbling over damaged (though divine) egos can cast a light on the central sections which is not particuarly Euripidean.
