ABSTRACT
If Greek tragedy is dead and buried, as critics hostile to individual films from the selection of previous chapters occasionally insist, both theatre producers and film directors seem slow to accept its interment. A review of the films made in the 1960s and 1970s alone would seem to undermine the judgement. These have been relatively few in number, admittedly, but the commerical success of Phaedra, the involvement of such world-class ‘auteurs’ as Pasolini and Jancso in the project of filming Greek tragedy, and the obvious fascination which that project holds for Cacoyannis, Pasolini and Dassin, in that they return to it after an initial attempt, combine to make the insistence on Greek tragedy's ‘irrelevance’ seem perverse.
