Yeats’
Sophocles, Guthrie’s staging, Stratford Festival of Canada.
This means a set
of intricate problems for the poet, the singing voice must then be found by the
players, a suggestion of dancing or of ritualized movement, in short a complete
analysis, and then Guthrie has to shape all of that as a film.
Peter Brook handles
this sort of thing as well.
Bosley Crowther of the New
York Times acknowledged “a jewel of great price,” all the while
lamenting “a lot of action is missed”, a real dullard. Aaron Cohen
(Village Voice) felt the same way, “a
noble effort.”
Tirasius, “I may seem mad to you but your parents
thought me sane.”
Kubrick, who engaged
Guthrie’s messenger for Hal, certainly remembers the title character’s
recounted rage in 2001: A Space Odyssey
(“I killed them ALL”).
The King of
Thebes, “I think myself the child of good luck!”
The herdsman, “alas,
I am on the edge of dreadful words.”
The chorus, “there
is no man blessed amongst men.”
Creon, “you won the mastery, but could not keep it
to the end.”
Pauline Kael
promotes Irving Lerner to co-director and intensifies Crowther’s view.