Over the weekend I viewed the MGM 1962 film version of Electra. It was definitely a different experience. I think I lost a lot of the rhetorical effect or quality of delivery that some students discuss in their posts through experiencing the play live. The movie was in black and white and was made in the early 60's. So we can easily say that the cinematography was not what it is today. Sometimes I actually had a hard time telling what was going on because I couldn't see, due to all the dark blending of colors. There was a scene where Orestes emerged from the shadows and I couldn't tell who was doing what because Orestes' grayness blended in with the grayness of the shadows.
Another big limitation was that the movie was entirely in Greek. At least, I think that's the language they were speaking. As the actors were reciting their lines, I was reading English subtitles along the bottom. Therefore, I hardly payed attention at all to the quality of delivery, or the way anyone spoke. I was just trying to get the words read and understand the story. Reading subtitles versus listening to someone say a line in person gives the script a much more robotic, disconnected feeling. The lines didn't feel connected to the person to me. The action was going on in the film and I was just trying to keep up with the words being said.
In the beginning of the movie, there were actually hardly any lines being spoken at all. The dialogue didn't pick up until a good 20-30 minutes into the film. I wondered if this was characteristic of Greek plays in general or if this was just the way the movie was made. I tried doing some additional research on if this was a characteristic or not, but couldn't find anything specifically to that, so I have to assume the silence in the beginning of the film was due to the film making.
Watching the movie and then reading what others said about the live play, I do think certain aspects of the play got lost in translation and just weren't communicated the same way through the screen - much less through a foreign film. While I think it would have been easier to get some more rhetorical quality from the live show, it was good to see the play through a alternative medium and offer a different perspective.
I'm sorry you had a difficult experience with the movie. I listened to the BBC recording and absolutely loved it! I really felt like the voice talents did a great job of keeping me tied into the story. It was really an experience I hadn't had before. I also think your description of subtitle-reading is interesting. I actually study modern translation and have read about domesticating and foreignizing approaches to TV. In the US, we definitely prefer domesticated media, meaning dubbed movies as opposed to subtitled. I have the same problem with most translated Greek literature. It isn't translated in a friendly way for me and I struggle to understand. So, I know the feeling.
ReplyDeleteThe language of the piece has an unexpected impact on its perception: The dramatization last night was presented largely in "Modern" English as opposed to the Archaic text we studied and, largely, I preferred the magniloquence of the Archaic. It makes me wonder how much I'm missing out on by not speaking Greek. :/
ReplyDeleteI think you might be right about drawn out dialogue and long pauses being apart of Greek culture though. Like Jared said most of the play we saw was (thankfully for me) mainly in modern english so it wasn't as drawn out as the script had been... I think the Greek culture really coined the term, "for dramatic effect" and we as a culture have simplified things a lot since then.
ReplyDelete