Apollo and the Muses on the Screen Author(S): Martin M. Winkler Source: International Journal of the Classical Tradition, Vol

Home , Aphaea

Neo-Mythologism: Apollo and the Muses on the Screen Author(s): Martin M. Winkler Source: International Journal of the Classical Tradition, Vol. 11, No. 3 (Winter, 2005), pp. 383- 423 Published by: Springer Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30221990 Accessed: 16-08-2015 20:33 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Springer is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to International Journal of the Classical Tradition. http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 83.137.211.198 on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 20:33:12 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Neo-Mythologism:Apollo and the Muses on the Screen

MARTINM. WINKLER

In antiquity,the idea of myth was fluid enough to accommodatea wide variety of divergent,even contradictory,versions of the same story.This traditioncontinues in modem times:myths, whether ancientor later,preserve their Proteannature. Striking examples for this flexibilityof mythicaltales are the adaptationsof ancient myths to the screen. Classicalantiquity has always played a major part in the history of film (and television),but screenwritersand directorsas a rule take great liber- ties with their source materials.In films based on Greekand Romanliterature, especially epic and tragedy,and in films with invented or modern settings, figures familiarto us fromclassical sources recurwith surprisingvariability. Vittorio Cottafavi, director of several films set in antiquity,coined the term "neo-mythologism"for this phenomenon. The present paper intends to demonstratethe validity of critical examinationsof such neo- mythologism by examining one specific topic: the appearancesof Apollo and the Muses on the screen. It is the first comprehensivesurvey of its subjectand analyzes the most importantfilms in which Apollo and the Muses play majorparts. The paper demonstratesthe wide variety of neo- mythologicalapproaches which films on ancientsubjects usually exhibit.They range from tragedy to epic, from musical, comedy,and romanceto science fiction, from art-housefilms to commercial products.Although individual works differ considerablyin their artisticqualities, they all present noteworthyexamples of the continuingvitality of the classicalpast in today's culture.

This paper addresses the survival of classical mythology in today's culture in one area of cinema. Filmic representations of antiquity either take the form of adaptations of classical literature or of modern narratives in which figures from ancient history or myth play a part. Most of them are highly inventive and partially or completely contradict our ancient sources. This phenomenon goes back to the earliest days of the cinema, which has made the greatest variety in the modern resurrections of ancient myths possible. As rep- resentative and at the same time thematically focused examples of filmmakers' different approaches to ancient myth I will examine the screen appearances of Apollo and the Muses, whom we encounter both in artistically significant films and in crassly commercial products. The very differences between and among these films make a systematic enquiry rewarding.' This is the more important today because the cinema, although pri- marily a visual and not a textual medium, has become the most influential way in which

1. Readersunfamiliar with the variety of Apollonian myths and images in antiquitymay find an overview in the essay collectionApollo: Origins and Influences,ed. Jon Solomon (Tucson:Uni- versity of Arizona Press, 1994).

MartinM. Winkler,Dept. of Modernand ClassicalLanguages, George Mason University,4400 Uni- versity Drive, Fairfax,VA, 22030-4444.

InternationalJournal of the Classical Tradition,Vol. 11, No. 3, Winter 2005, pp. 383-423.

This content downloaded from 83.137.211.198 on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 20:33:12 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 384 InternationalJournal of theClassical Tradition / Winter 2005

we tell stories. A brief theoreticalconsideration of modem representationsof classical themes provides the basis for my discussions of individual filmic "texts."

1. Antiquity, Cinema,and Neo-Mythologism

In recent decades, classical philology has expanded in new interdisciplinarydirections that encompass a far greatervariety of methods of enquiry into the cultures of Greece and Rome than preceding generationsof scholars might have thought possible or desir- able. The main impulse for this expansion has come from modem theories of literature and the social sciences. By contrast,the most revolutionarycultural medium of the twentieth century,the cinema, came into its own as a legitimate and importantarea of concern for classical scholars only about twenty-five years ago. Before then, most professional classicistshad kept a wary distance,chiefly because filmic retellingsof ancient history,literature,and myth used to take great libertieswith their sources. (They still do.) It is nevertheless appropriatethat classicalphilologists should also become what may be termed film philologists. The extensive list of historical films and television series about Greece and Rome alone provides ample justificationfor this.2Indeed, a classical scholar has re- cently referred to "the value of cinema to classicists (and the value of classicists to cinema)" and concluded:

It [the cinema] readily reveals connections and differences between antiquity and modern societies, and exposes the mechanisms whereby modern cultures use the classical past to interrogatethe present;its study can illuminate classical cultures and their literatures.... cinema brings classics out into a very public domain and makes the interrogationof antiquity and the classical tradition available globally.3

In addition to historical cinema, classicists may legitimately think of literatureand myth in their film-philological undertakings.What cinema scholar Pierre Sorlin has deduced about historical films applies as well to related subjects,as my parentheticaladditions to his text here quoted will make evident:

An historical film [or a film based on a work of literature]can be puzzling for a scholar:everything that he considershistory [or importantfor the plot and style

2. Jon Solomon, TheAncient World in the Cinema,2nd ed. (New Haven and London:Yale Univer- sity Press, 2001),36-99, gives the most extensive overview.For detailed analyses of specific aspects of Roman history on film see MariaWyke, Projectingthe Past:Ancient Rome, Cinema and History,ser. The New Ancient World(New Yorkand London:Routledge, 1997),and Gladiator: Filmand History, ed. MartinM. Winkler(Oxford; Malden, MA: Blackwell,2004). 3. Maria Wyke, "Are You Not Entertained?Classicists and Cinema,"International Journal of the ClassicalTradition, 9 (2002-2003),430-445; quotation at 445. I have argued for the importanceof classicists' involvement in film philology on two previous occasions:in my "Introduction"to ClassicalMyth and Culturein the Cinema,ed. Martin M. Winkler(Oxford; New York:Oxford University Press, 2001), 3-22, and in "Altertumswissenschaftlerim Kino; oder: Quo vadis, philologia?"International Journal of the ClassicalTradition, 11 (this same volume), above, 95-110 (review articleon PontesII: Antike im Film,ed. MartinKorenjak and KarlheinzTochterle, Com- paranda5 [Innsbruck:StudienVerlag, 2002]).

This content downloaded from 83.137.211.198 on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 20:33:12 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Winikler 385

in a literarywork] is ignored;everything he sees on the screen is, in his opinion, pure imagination.But at the same time it is importantto examine the difference between history [or the scholarlystudy of literature]as it is written by the specialist and history [or the original text] as it is received by the non-specialist.

Sorlin sees the most important aspect of historical film in "the use of historicalunder- standing in the life of a society"-that is to say, in the society that makes such films.4The same goes for literary adaptations:the ways in which particularmodern uses of source texts illuminate aspects of the life of the society that produces such adaptations.So the conclusion becomes unavoidable that, as far as cinematic recreationsof times past are concerned,in adaptations of either historicalor literarysubjects, scholars' demands for authenticity,while understandable,are beside the point.5 They fail to take into account the natureof film as a narrativemedium which needs the freedom to be creativein order to tell its stories. Philologists will be reminded of the comparableconcept of contamina- tion that is importantto the establishmentof the manuscripttradition of classical texts.6 For this reason the cinema cannot be solely or chiefly indebted to or dependent on prin- ciples of historicalor philological authenticity.This, of course, is not meant as a denigra- tion of historicalor literaryaccuracy in a visual adaptation or retelling.On the contrary: concern for authenticityin the recreationof the past is a sign that creativeartists such as screenwriters,set decorators,costume designers, and directors take their task seriously. But correctnessin the representationof the past is neither a necessarynor a sufficientcon- dition to assure the quality of the result. In the area of mythology, the traditionof imagining alternativesto well-attestedand even canonicalversions of myth goes back to antiquity itself. Our surviving body of texts reveals the existence of differentor mutually exclusive variants of certainparts or individual moments in a myth, and we have visual evidence of myths or versions of a myth unattested in any text-a kind of visual equivalent to textual hapaxlegomena. It is there- fore difficult, not to say impossible, to maintain that certain accounts of a myth are the correctones and that others are false. Even in antiquity,alternative versions spread far and wide throughoutliterature and the visual arts, as the works of playwrights,mythog- raphers,and epic and lyrical poets on the one hand and those of sculptors and painters on the other attest.7This traditionhas continued. Today,in an age of advanced technology, myths can be told or retold entirely in images, and moving ones at that. Cinema and its offspring, television, have proven fertile grounds for reimagining and reinventing

4. Both quotationsare from PierreSorlin, TheFilm in History:Restaging the Past (Oxford:Black- well, 1980),ix. Regardingfilms set in classicalantiquity cf. my "Gladiatorand the Traditionsof HistoricalCinema" in Gladiator:Film and History (above, n. 2), 16-30, at 16-24 (section entitled "Filmand HistoricalAuthenticity"). 5. SergioBertelli, I corsaridel tempo:Gli errori e gli orrorideifilm storici (Florence: Ponte Alle Grazie, 1995),provides the most extensive examinationsof errorscontained in a large variety of his- toricalfilms. 6. Cf. e.g., Paul Maas, TextualCriticism, tr. BarbaraFlower (Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1958;rpt. 1972),3-9 (Germanoriginal: Textkritik [Leipzig: B. G. Teubner,1957], 6-9), and M. L. West,Tex- tualCriticism and EditorialTechnique Applicable to Greekand Latin Texts (Stuttgart: Teubner, 1973), 12-13 and 35-37. 7. A case in point are the ancient portrayalsof Odysseus as hero in epic and villain in tragedy. W.B. Stanford,The Ulysses Theme: A Studyof theAdaptability ofa TraditionalHero (Oxford: Black- well, 1954;rpt. Ann Arbor:University of MichiganPress, 1968),is the classic account.

This content downloaded from 83.137.211.198 on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 20:33:12 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 386 InternationalJournal of theClassical Tradition / Winter 2005

classical antiquity.So film directorVittorio Cottafavi, who made several films set in antiquity,aptly described his and his fellow filmmakers'approach to their subjectmatter as "neo-mythologism."8 The above observations are the frameworkfor my examinationof examples of such neo-mythologism on the following pages. My intentions are twofold. The first is to demonstratethe validity of the neo-mythologicalapproach. I have thereforechosen as a test case the subjectof Apollo and the Muses, a topic that is especially suitablebecause it remains manageable for the purpose of such an initial enquiry.The films involved are few enough to make a reasonably complete survey possible. Traditionalphilologists strive to demonstrate familiarity with all ancient texts relevant to their topics; by the same token, I, too, discuss or at least mention all occurrencesof Apollo and the Muses on the screen that I have been able to find. (I omit only some negligible instances.) On the other hand, films featuringApollo or the Muses are numerous enough to present us with a surprising breadth of themes, settings, and levels of artistic achievement. But even works of crass commercialism,some of which will be encountered below, may contain aspects worthy of attention. As a result, the range of artistic and commercial works, of genre films and art-house cinema, reveals the vitality of ancient myth in today's culture. My second intention is to illustrate through descriptions and analyses how classical scholarshipmay approachand intellectuallyengage with themes of neo-mythologism in a popular modern medium. So I hope to provide an impulse for all those who wish to bridge the distance between today's culture and ancient mythology.

2. Delphi and Apollo's Oracle

Apollo is most readily seen on screen in videos of theatrical productions of Greek tragedy.A well-known example is the 1981 adaptation by director Peter Hall and poet- translatorTony Harrison of Aeschylus' Oresteiafor the National Theatreof GreatBritain. The production is remarkablefor Harrison'sattempt to find a modem linguistic equivalent to Aeschylus' grand poetry, for bringing out, simultaneously, the remoteness of Greek tragedy and its closeness to us, also for its stylish use of music (by Harrison Birt- whistle) and, not least, for its acting with masks. Harrisonhas described the purpose of his decision to use masks in the following words:

I was interestedin exploring the world of masks and the language that was spo- ken in order to get a better idea of what the poetic nature of the language was.9

8. On Cottafavi and his term "neo-mythologism"see Pierre Leprohon, The ItalianCinema, tr. Roger Greaves and Oliver Stallybrass,Cinema Two (London:Secker and Warburg;New York and Washington:Praeger, 1972), 173-179 (French original: Le Cinema italien: Histoire, chronologie, biographies,filmographies, documents, images [Paris: Seghers, 1966] 184-190). 9. Quoted from MarianneMcDonald, Ancient Sun, Modern Light: Greek Drama on theModern Stage (New York:Columbia University Press, 1992),145. Tony Harrison,"Facing Up to the Muses," Proceedingsof the ClassicalAssociation (Great Britain), 85 (1988), 7-29, discusses his views on masks in greaterdetail at 18-22. A reprintappears in TonyHarrison, ed. Neil Astley, Bloodaxe CriticalAnthologies 1 (Newcastle Upon Tyne: Bloodaxe Books, 1991), 429-454 (442-448 on masks). Cf. also Peter Hall, Exposedby theMask: Form and Languagein Drama(New York:The- atre CommunicationsGroup, 2000), 24-30 and 33-36.

This content downloaded from 83.137.211.198 on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 20:33:12 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Winkler 387

In TheEumenides, the last play of the Oresteia,Apollo and Athena are commandingpres- ences on the stage, as even the small video screen reveals. Phoebus Apollo, god of light later identified with the sun, wears a golden mask and is dressed in white and gold. The stage of Hall's production is patternedon the layout of the ancientGreek theater.'0 The temple of Apollo at Delphi, the setting of the opening scene of Aeschylus' Eu- menides,was to have been transposed to modern black Africa in a film that was never made. Italianpoet and filmmakerPier Paolo Pasolini, who, as a Marxist,was a vigorous criticof Westernsociety, intended to film a modem adaptationof the Oresteiain Africaas a comment on Westerncapitalism and colonialism. Pasolini had to abandon this project, but while scouting locationsand doing otherpreproduction work on his Oresteia,he made an hour-long film essay: Appuntiper un' OrestiadeAfricana (Notes for an AfricanOresteia, 1970)." Pasolini's equivalent for the Delphic temple of the god who, as leader of the Muses, was associated with arts and sciences, is nothing but the modern sanctuary of knowledge, a university.Pasolini himself comments on this in voice-over.I quote from the English-languageversion of his film:

The temple of Apollo as I will depict it metaphoricallyin my film of the African Oresteia-I'll show it as a university,and, to be more precise, the University of Dar-es-Salaamwhich, seen [here]from a distance, displays unmistakablesigns of resemblingthe typical Anglo-Saxonneo-capitalistic university. The external aspect, elegant and confident in design, the internalorganization make it a typical university of the kind that is frequentlyseen in black Africa. These universities,as I repeat,follow a progressiveneo-capitalistic pattern, and they are the seat of the future local intelligentsiain the culture and learning of the young Africannations.

10. MichaelPowell and EmericPressburger's film TheLife and Deathof ColonelBlimp (1943) contains a brief scene in which the protagonistattends a musical comedy called Ulyssesin a Lon- don theaterin 1902.The stage reveals Mt. Olympus, where the council of the gods is deciding on Odysseus' returnto Ithaca,a scene modeled on Book One of Homer's Odyssey.The divine assemblyconsists of Zeus,Athena, Hera, Poseidon (absent in Homer),Hermes, Ares, Aphrodite, and Apollo. Apollo appears holding a lyre and wearing a radiate crown on his head. As in Homer,he does not take part in the deliberations.The Apollo Belvedere,a Roman copy of a Greekoriginal now in the Vatican,is probablythe most famous type of the god's statuary.A gaudy partiallypainted reproductionof it (blackhair, bright-red cloak) briefly appears in Jean- Luc Godard'sLe mipris (Contempt, 1963). The type recursin the opening sequenceof BlakeEd- wards's farce The Returnof the Pink Panther(1975), in which an ingenious thief steals the world's largestdiamond (fictional)from an Easternmuseum (equallyfictional). To impresson viewers the circumstancethat the museum is indeed great enough to have such a treasurein its collection,the statue of Apollo appearsin several shots. It is the only work of art in this museum that is given such prominence,thereby lending an aura of high culture to the museum and a measureof credibilityto the film's plot. The BelvedereApollo also appears to the protagonist of Oliver Stone's TheDoors (1991) in a scene of drug-inducedhallucination. 11. On Pasolini and Aeschylus see especially Italo Gallo, "Pasolini traduttoredi Eschilo,"and MariaGrazia Bonanno, "Pasolini e l'Orestea:Dal 'teatrodi parola'al 'cinemadi poesia',"both in: Pasolinie l'antico:I donidella ragione, ed. UmbertoTodini (Naples: Edizioni ScientificheIta- liane, 1995),33-43 and 45-66. (Thebook's subtitle is a free translationof Aeschylus, Eumenides 850.) This book also reprints (257-259) Pasolini's own text on this fim ("Nota per l'ambien- tazione dell'Orestiadein Africa").

This content downloaded from 83.137.211.198 on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 20:33:12 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 388 InternationalJournal of theClassical Tradition / Winter 2005

The University of Dar-es-Salaam,a city whose name means "House of Peace,"parallels ancient Delphi as a place where opposites may meet in harmony:black Africa with its emerging states and societies, white civilization with its ancient educational and cultural traditions.So the encounter between Europe and Africa for once need not be a clash of cultures but rathercan provide the basis for new levels of social development, learning, and unification. Pasolini aspires to nothing less than a modern equivalent of Apollo's sanctuary at Delphi, which had fulfilled comparable functions for the ancient Greek city-states. The two films of Greek tragedy that Pasolini did complete, Edipore (OedipusRex, 1967), and Medea(1969), magnificently realized his artistic vision of antiquity. Edipore, filmed mainly in Morocco,strips Sophocles' play down to the layer of prehistoricmyth. Its settings are primitive, but Pasolini presents them in sophisticatedways. Non-Western music and a desert landscape tell us that we are in a time of myth, not of history or real- ity. As Greek writer-directorMichael Cacoyannis has observed: "Pasolini did not make Greek tragedy. He made very striking films about the myths on which tragedy is based."12In Edipore, this is best seen in the sequence in which Oedipus visits Apollo's oracle. Unlike the real site, which is elevated both geographically (up in the mountains) and esthetically (through its architecture),Pasolini's Delphic oracle is a tiny spot on the outskirts of a village in a barren, if austerely beautiful, desert landscape (Fig. 1). A

Fig.1. Edipore. The Delphic Oracle as prehistoricdesert oasis, with the Pythiain the center.

12. MarianneMcDonald and MartinM. Winkler,"Michael Cacoyannis and Irene Papas on Greek Tragedy,"in: ClassicalMyth and Culture in theCinema (above, n. 3), 72-89; quotation at 81.

This content downloaded from 83.137.211.198 on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 20:33:12 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Winkler 389

Fig. 2. Edipore. The Pythia,wearing double-headedheadgear, and her masked attendants.

grotesque, callous, and cruel Pythia informs Oedipus of his fate (Fig. 2). I quote her words from the subtitles of the film's English release version:

In your fate it is written: "Youwill kill your fatherand will make love with your mother."[Here she laughs uproariously.] You understand? It's written in your fate: "Youwill kill your father,make love with your mother."Thus says the God, and it will surely come to pass. Now go away. Don't infect people [literally:"these people"]with your presence.

The priestess's words, her strange dress and appearance,and the setting all emphasize the devastating power of the god over a helpless and barely comprehending human. The Pythia's prophecy condemns Oedipus as being inevitably polluted even before he actually commits any wrong-a particularly annihilating aspect of the divine. In this way Pasolini demonstrates several important aspects of tragedy: the dark and violent side of the gods, our inability to understand the divine will that may at any moment ruin our lives, our impotence in the face of an absolute power that need not justify itself, and the utter isolation and loneliness that result. At the end of this sequence Pasolini expresses the Sophoclean themes of light and darkness and of vision and blindness by in- tercuttingshots of a bright and sunny sky with blurry point-of-view shots of a lowering sky. He also gives Oedipus a gesture that foreshadows his eventual fate, a gesture touch- ing to those who know the outcome of his story: several times, Oedipus places his hand or arm over his eyes. The rising curve of eleosand phobosthat Aristotle postulated for the catharsis of tragedy in his Poetics (ch. 6.2) commences here. The sequence effectively illustrates Oedipus' bewilderment, his intellectual incomprehension, and his sense of abandonment.Through the bizarre figure of the Pythia and her behavior, Apollo, the

This content downloaded from 83.137.211.198 on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 20:33:12 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 390 InternationalJournal of theClassical Tradition /Winter 2005

cause of all this, becomes an almost demonic power. Pasolini appears to hint at the prox- imity of what, after Nietzsche, we have come to call the Apollonian to its opposite, the Dionysian. The influence of Pasolini'sfilm on cinematic retellings of ancient stories is consider- able. It may be seen prominently in FrancoRossi's Eneide(1971), a six-hour adaptation of Virgil'sAeneid for public television in several Europeancountries. At Aeneid3.73-120, Aeneas tells Dido, queen of Carthage,about his voyage after the fall of Troyand reports on his visit to Delos where he received a prophecy from Apollo. Rossi includes this episode in a brief flashback. But his Delos looks rather like Pasolini's Delphi: a vast desert with rocky and treeless mountains in the background and African-lookingpeo- ple. The sanctuary of Apollo, from which the prophecy emanates, is by no means the grand temple mentioned by Virgil'sAeneas; rather,it is a large wind-blown and ragged tent in the middle of a sandy plain. As did Pasolini, Rossi takes pains to present an ex- otic pre-classical world, one from which the civilization of Rome and its greatest poet can later be born. A Nietzschean moment even strongerthan that in Pasolini's Edipore occurs in Jules Dassin's A Dreamof Passion(1978). The theater of the Apollonian sanctuary at Delphi plays a major part in this film, in which a modem revival of Euripides'Medea is taking place. Famous Greek actress Melina Mercouri plays Maya, a famous Greek actress rehearsing the title part. To gain greaterunderstanding of what may have driven a mother to kill her own children, Maya becomes absorbedby the case of Brenda,an American officer's wife who is a modem equivalent of Medea. (The film was inspired by an actual case in Athens.) At one point, Maya, alone, enters the abandoned house in which the crime had occurred, and writer-directorDassin fuses two temporal and psychological levels. As in a flashback,we hear Brenda'svoice-over and see her commit the murders. But we also see Maya watching Brendaand even taking her place. In this way Dassin conveys to the viewer how utterly Maya, an independent and rational--one might say, Apollonian-woman, falls under the spell of Dionysian violence and ecstasy (in its literal sense). Maya's creative mind attempts to reach rational understanding but is subdued by the irrationalthat it encounters.A third dimension that Dassin fuses with the other two is the performanceof the play itself. The cinematictechnique to convey all this to the viewer is intercutting. The importanceof the Delphic oracle for Greek history is nowhere better seen than in the part it played in 480 B.c.,when the invasion of Greeceby Xerxes,King of Persia, at the head of an immense army was imminent. Against all military odds, the Greeks managed first to delay the Persians at Thermopylae and then to defeat them decisively at Salamis. Oracles were instrumentalfor both of these famous victories. In the cinema, the Battle of Thermopylaefound its greatesthomage with Rudolph Mat6's The300 Spartans (1962),a film that combines historicalfact, mainly taken from Herodotus, with the invention that is unavoidable for a coherentretelling of the battle and what led up to it. For example, exteriorswere filmed in Greeceat authentic locations, although the geography of Thermopylaeand its surroundingshas changed so much since the fifth-centuryB.C. as no longer to fit the situation. Similarly,the Delphic oracles are quoted accurately,if in abbre- viated and simplified forms. (Zeus is referredto by his Romanname for the sake of audiences more familiar with Roman than Greek gods, although Athene is not called Min- erva.) In an assembly of representativesfrom various Greekcity-states who are debating what to do about the approaching Persians, one delegate hostile to Athens quotes Apollo's first oracle to the Athenians:"Fly to the world's end, doomed ones, leave your homes, for fire and the headlong god of war shall bring you low." But Themistocles,the

This content downloaded from 83.137.211.198 on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 20:33:12 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Winkler 391

Athenian leader,counters this with a quotation from Apollo's second and more hopeful prophecy to Athens: "Thenfar-seeing Jove grantsthis to the prayersof Athene:Safe shall the wooden wall continue for thee and thy children."Themistocles explains what the wooden wall is: "Ournew Athenian ships, manned by the bravest sailors in the world. There'sour wooden wall. The wall far-seeingJove declares shall keep us safe. The gods don't lie." In this way Themistocles manages to unite all Greece against the Persians. That he is here played by Sir Ralph Richardson,one of the most commanding actors on the Britishstage and screen, only reinforceshis authorityand wiliness. In a laterscene, King Leonidas,soon to be the famous hero of Thermopylae,learns of Apollo's prophecy concerningSparta and himself:

Dwellers in glorious Sparta,hear now the words of your fate: Eitheryour famous city goes down in front of the Persians, Or,if your city is spared, the land of Spartamust mourn For the death of one of her kings.

I have arrangedthese words differently from those of the oracles quoted above to indi- cate their rhythmic nature, which, surprisingly in a mainstreamHollywood film, manages to imitate, if loosely, the hexametricalverse in which the Delphic utterances were conveyed. This is an indication of how closely the film wishes to adhere to its source.13 As is to be expected, Leonidas is equal to the momentous prophecy: "Itis either Sparta or a Spartan king. I accept the challenge." During the battle at Thermopylae he will defiantly reject Xerxes' offer, made by Hydarnes, leader of the Persian Immortals, of sparing the Spartans' lives if they surrender.He does so, in both Greek and English, with one of the pithiest sayings ever recorded in antiquity: "Moltnlabe. Come and get them!"14 Variationson the theme of the Delphic oracle appear in various cinematiccontexts. The earliestexample is the one-minute film L'oraclede Delphes(1903) by Georges Milibs, a modern story.A thief, played by M6lidshimself, breaksinto a storehouse to steal a pre- cious object,but "abearded figure emerges from the darknessand frightensthe thief into returninghis ill-gotten loot."'5M6lies pioneered an exuberantuse of trick cinematogra-

13. The three oracles quoted above appear at Herodotus, TheHistories 7.140-141 and 220. Peter Green, TheGreco-Persian Wars (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1996;rpt. 1998), 67-68 and 95, gives the complete versions in English. Green'sbook is the standardmodem account of 480 B.C. 14. Leonidas'reply is reportedby Plutarch,Sayings of Spartans11 (= Moralia225 c-d). According to Plutarch,Leonidas answered in writing to a written command fromXerxes ("Send [i.e. hand over] your weapons")and referredto these weapons, not, as in the film, to the Spartans. 15. Quotationfrom Kemp R. Niver, EarlyMotion Pictures: The Paper Print Collection in theLibrary of Congress,ed. Bebe Bergsten(Washington: Library of Congress, 1985),232 (s.v. "TheOracle of Delphi"),with additionalinformation on this film. Mdlibsmade several films on classicalsub- jects.On Apollonianaspects of his works see MauriceBessy and Lo Duca, GeorgesMilids, mage: Editiondu centenaire(1861-1961) (Paris: Pauvert, 1961), 14 (drawingby Melies of a classicizing musicianor danceror perhaps even a Muse, holding a lyre above her head), 36 (drawingand text by Milids of a satiric scene from the battle of the Lapithsand centaurs,a myth that led to one of the most famous ancient representationsof Apollo, his statue on the temple of Zeus at Olympia),and 198 (design by Mdlibsof a scene for Faustwith ruins of Greco-Romanarchitec- ture,part of which somewhat resemblesthe ruins of Apollo's temple at Delphi).

This content downloaded from 83.137.211.198 on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 20:33:12 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 392 InternationalJournal of theClassical Tradition / Winter2005

phy, such as double and multiple exposure, usually to comic effect.'6Since his time, such and other,if more advanced, forms of trickeryhave served filmmakerswell to present su- pernaturalphenomena, not least those that are part and parcel of ancient myths. So it is no surprise that science-fictionand fantasy films should have oracularmoments. TheMatrix (1999), written and directedby Andy and LarryWachowski, is an eclectic science-fiction thriller loaded with innumerable referencesto popular culture, Eastern and Westernreligion, and various philosophical systems. Its main charactersbear sym- bolic names like Neo (anagramof One), Morpheus,and Trinity.Neo, discovering that the world he lives in is really an illusion ruled by computers, is chosen to be the one to save mankind. Neo is taken to a woman called the Oracle in order to receive enlightenment. "She'sa guide, Neo. She can help you to find the path," Morpheus explains. He also informs Neo that the Oracle is "very old": "She'sbeen with us since the beginning." Sur- prisingly to Neo and to the viewers, this oracle is located in an apartmentbuilding in a lower-class section of a modern metropolis. The Oracle is an elderly and motherly woman who lives in a humble but cozy apartment,and her kitchen figures prominently in this sequence. "Not quite what you expected, right?" the Oracle observes to Neo (Fig. 3). The Delphic motto "KnowThyself" appears in Latin (TemetNosce) on a sign on the kitchen wall, and the Oracle translatesit for Neo (Fig. 4). As in Oedipus' case, the Or- acle reveals part of the future to Neo ("You'regoing to have to make a choice")and warns him of what lies ahead ("I hate giving good people bad news"). But there is an unexpected twist. The Oracle concludes that Neo is not the One. Is she wrong? Can an oracle err? Ironically,the subject of foreknowledge and fate has appeared in a rather playful way a little earlierin this sequence when the Oraclementions to Neo a vase with flowers, which he promptly breaks:"Don't worry about the vase."-"What vase?"-"That vase." She then asks Neo an intriguing question which, however, is left unanswered: "Would you still have broken it if I hadn't said anything?"On the soundtrack,the popular stan-

Fig. 3. TheMatrix. A motherly Oraclein her kitchen.

16. The Muses briefly appear in Mdlies' 1903 film Le tonnerrede Jupiter(Jupiter's Thunder); cf. Solomon, TheAncient World in theCinema (above, n. 2), 102: "a dwarfish Olympian [is] throwing cardboardlightning bolts onto the stage. They explode, he does a few amusing flips, and the Muses appearbehind him."

This content downloaded from 83.137.211.198 on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 20:33:12 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Winkler 393

Fig. 4. TheMatrix. "Do you know what that means?"Neo (backto camera)looking at the Apollon- ian maxim in the Oracle'skitchen. dard "I'mBeginning to See the Light"provides an ironic comment during part of this sequence.At its beginning, when Neo and Morpheusentered the building, a blind old man, most likely a beggar, could briefly be seen sitting in the hallway. He nodded his head when the other two passed by him as if he had recognized them. He may be an allusion to Tiresias,the blind seer in Oedipusthe Kingor to the Oedipus of Sophocles' Oedipusat Colonus.The moment is also a brief and apparentlyparadoxical reminder of the theme of blindness and knowledge that is prominent in Sophocles' Oedipus plays. The two se- quels of TheMatrix-The MatrixReloaded (2001) and MatrixRevolutions (2003)-also feature the Oraclebut do so less prominently.Still, in the third film the Latinmotto from the first warrantsa close-up inserted for special emphasis, and the same song can briefly be heard again on the soundtrack. The plot of Steven Spielberg'sMinority Report (2002) takes up the theme of fate and destiny in a futuristiccrime thriller.Three "precogs"-people endowed with precogni- tion floating in a tank reminiscentof an amniotic sac-warn a special Pre-Crimepolice unit that murders are about to be committed;the police then prevent these crimes from occurring.Complications ensue when one of the policemen learns that he has been identified as someone who is going to commit the murder of a man he does not even know. The precogs' surroundingsin the film have vaguely religious overtones that contain dis- tant reminiscencesof ancient oracles. In a kind of "EastMeets West"adventure, the titular hero of Gordon Hessler's The GoldenVoyage ofSinbad (1974) seeks informationin the temple of the Oracleof All Knowl- edge. At the price of her own exhaustion and even evaporation, the temple guardian- and-priestess,a kind of Pythia figure, conjuresup a theriomorphicdivinity which utters its prophecy in verse, if only as doggerel. In Sam Wanamaker'sSinbad and the Eye of the Tiger(1977), Sinbad and his fellow adventurerstravel to Hyperboreaat the far north of the earth, a mythic country associated with Apollo.17Here they enter a sacred shrine inside a pyramid. (The film combines Arabian, Greek, and Egyptian visual and narrative

17. FrederickM. Ahl, "Amber,Avallon, and Apollo's Singing Swan,"American Journal of Philology, 103 (1982),373-411, provides detailed documentation.

This content downloaded from 83.137.211.198 on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 20:33:12 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 394 InternationalJournal of theClassical Tradition / Winter2005

elements.) A pillar of light rays magically descending from above is said to be "thrown down from the crown of Apollo itself,"just as Apollo had earlierbeen mentioned as the source of the auroraborealis. On a level artistically lower but representativeof an especially popular film genre of the 1950s and 1960s are the Italian Hercules films. An oracle scene occurs in Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia's Gli amoridi Ercole(1960).18 Early in this film, Hercules visits a grotto in which an unspecified but elaborately dressed prophetess resides. She is pho- tographed from a low angle, appearing in subdued light and surrounded by clouds of smoke mysteriously swirling behind her. Hercules, a bit tired of heroism, asks her about his future:

Oracle, you who see the truth in shifting sand, in the moving tides of the sea, in the flight of birds across the skies, you to whom the stars reveal their secret and the Fates disclose the mysteries we mortals see only in our admonishing dreams, tell me if the gods have been placated at last, if afterendless trials I shall have peace.

Hercules' apostrophe is elevated and flowery in a mannerbefitting an epic hero, but it is far from accuratebecause the ways he enumeratesare not those in which such a prophetess receives her knowledge of the future.Observing the flight of birds, for instance, is au- gury and has nothing to do with oracles. Neither do dreams or the Fates. Perhaps this is the reason why the Pythia, if that is who she is, is rather aloof and unrevealing in her reply, which she ends with the unhelpful observation:"The mist returns;all is obscured by a cloud of blackness."In the vagueness of her reply, however, she adheres to the nature of most oracularutterances known from antiquity.Hercules' plea-"You must help me to bear my destiny"-remains unanswered. Predictably,however, our brawny hero then rises to all challenges that the plot holds in store for him.'9 In 1962, an American Hercules visits Delphi in a ratherlow-comic context, one that has nothing at all to do with Apollo. Instead, Delphi is mentioned merely as a readily available name, chosen for being familiarto audiences whose knowledge of antiquity is not the strongest. This film is Edward Bernds's TheThree Stooges Meet Hercules, in which a time machine transportsthe eponymous fools to a highly fancifulancient Greece. Much of the film's forced comedy works by way of deliberate anachronism.Muscleman Her- cules has to appear in the arena, and accordingly the DelphiDaily carries the headline: "HerculesAgrees to Final Bout."A poster proclaims, in Barnum-and-Baileyfashion, that "MightyHercules Meets the Nine-Headed Hydra" in the "Arenaof Delphi" and further informs us: "Admission 5 Drachmas."

18. The film'sEnglish-language version, from which my quotationbelow is taken,is variously entitled Lovesof Hercules,The Love of Hercules,and Herculesvs. theHydra. 19. Shortly after this film, another cinematicHercules receives guidance from a rathereerie (and masked) Sibyl in MarioBava's Ercole al centrodella terra (1961), a film remarkablefor telling its neo-mythologism in the style of a horror film. The film's English titles are Herculesin the HauntedWorld, Hercules vs. the Vampires,The Vampiresvs. Hercules,Hercules at the Centerof the Earth,and WithHercules to the Centerof the Earth.The titular vampires refer to Underworld monsters and to the presenceof ChristopherLee in the role of the villainous King Lykos.Lee is best known for playing Count Draculain several films.

This content downloaded from 83.137.211.198 on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 20:33:12 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Winkler 395

3. God of Light, God of Cinema

In antiquity, Apollo was the Mousagetis, the leader of the goddesses of arts and sciences who represent all of human civilization. Today, Apollo may take on the character of what we may call, analogously, kinimatagetfs, guardian of the cinema and preserver of its se- crets as a modern form of representational art. The cinema is the art of painting moving images in light, and light is the preserve of Phoebus Apollo, the "shining" god often identified with the sun. As god of prophecy, Apollo has the power to bring hidden things to light and reveal the future to mortals or to withhold such knowledge. The name of the island of Delos, on which Apollo had been born and which held his other most important sanctuary besides Delphi, points to these aspects of the god.20 So cinema, which works by means of photography-literally, the process of "writing with light"-is by nature a modem Apollonian art form, close to the god of all light.21 French poet, painter, and filmmaker Jean Cocteau repeatedly hailed it as a new Muse: "FILM, the new Muse" (1920), "the Muse of Cinema, whom the nine sisters have accepted into their close and strict circle" (1953), and: "The Muse of Cinema is the youngest of all Muses" (1959).22 The most profound recourse to Apollo occurs in a film in which the god plays a rather unusual but crucial part, although he does not appear on screen. Theo (Theodoros) Angelopoulos' film Tovlemma tou Odyssea (Ulysses' Gaze, 1995), with its epic running time of almost three hours, tells a story set in the Balkan wars of the late twentieth century. The film is a modern reworking of themes of and an homage to Homer's Odyssey.23The film's

20. The name "Delos"(etymologically related to diloun,"to make visible, disclose, reveal")means "Visible,Conspicuous, Clear." According to legend, the island is so named because it suddenly became visible afterhaving been hidden below the sea. 21. Delos-Film,a minor Germanproduction company that released a few romanticmelodramas and comedies in the mid-1950s,had a stylized Ionic column for its logo. Apollo Cinemais the name of a Los Angeles-baseddistribution company. Apollo Cinemasare a large theaterchain in GreatBritain. The electronicApollo Movie Guide (www.apolloguide.com)promises "intel- ligent reviews online."The level of this intelligencevaries. 22. JeanCocteau, The Art of Cinema,ed. Andre Bernardand Claude Gauteur,tr. Robin Buss (Lon- don and New York:Boyars, 1992; rpt. 1999),23, 123, and 56 (with slight corrections);cf. also 176-177 and 192-193. - I have examined the final close-up on the face of Greta Garbo in RoubenMamoulian's film QueenChristina (1933) in connectionwith the face of Apollo on one of his most famous classical statues, that on the temple of Zeus at Olympia, in "TheFace of Tragedy:From Theatrical Mask to CinematicClose-Up," Mouseion, III.2 (2002), 43-70, at 65-69. 23. MartinVohler, "Die Melancholieam Ende des Jahrhunderts:Zum Blickdes Odysseusvon Theo Angelopoulos," in: PONTESII: Antikeimrn Film (above, n. 3), 72-83, examines classical and Homeric aspects of the film. Franloise Letoublon and CarolineEades, "Apo tous arkhaious stous pros6pikous mythous: To pr6to vlemma kai o arkhegonos logos ston Theod6ro An- gelopoulo,"in: Sinemythologia:Oi ellhnikoimythoi ston pankosmio kinimatografo, ed. MichalisD&- mopoulos (Athens:PolitistikP Olympiada, 2003), 89-113, give a more detailed interpretation.I am indebted to FrangoiseL~toublon for making the original French version of their article ("Des mythes antiques t celui du premier regard et de la parole originelle chez Angelopou- los") availableto me. Cf. also the chapteron this film in Andrew Horton,The Films of TheoAn- gelopoulos:A Cinemaof Contemplation,new ed., ser.Princeton Modern Greek Studies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 181-201. Sylvie Rollet, "Leregard d'Ulysse: Un plaidoyer pour l'humanit6du cinema,"Positif, 415 (September,1995), 18-20, gives an introductionto Ulysses'Gaze and Odyssean overtones in earlier films by Angelopoulos.

This content downloaded from 83.137.211.198 on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 20:33:12 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 396 InternationalJournal of theClassical Tradition / Winter 2005

fictionalprotagonist is a famous expatriateGreek film director,who remains unnamed- in the script, he is called "A"-and stands in for all filmmakers,not least Angelopoulos himself.24This directorhas returnedto Greece for showings of his latest film. He receives a request through the Athens Film Archive to search for three unexposed reels of film shot by the brothersMiltos and YannakisManaki, actual pioneers of Balkancinema at the beginning of the twentieth century.Their 1905 film TheWeavers, brief excerpts of which appear in Ulysses'Gaze, is considered to have been the "firstknown Greek film."25The Manakibrothers' film for which the directorhas been searching,however, has remained completely unknown, so his interest is piqued. On his journey to discover the where- abouts of the film, the directortravels deep into the heart of darkness of South-Eastern Europe, the very region that had once provided the cradle of Europeancivilization. His quest is also a journey of self-discovery.Ulysses' Gaze is Angelopoulos's homage to cinema itself, both as witness of contemporaryhistory and as a modern art form. He pays tributeto the Manakibrothers, who had brought cinema into Greece,and to the nature of film as artistic medium whose technology can be mastered but whose essence remains elusive. Earlyin the film, the directormeets a young woman who works in a film archive and is herself a preserverof cinema and culture. He tells her the story of an eerie, almost supernatural,experience he once had on Delos. The presence and power of Apollo had made themselves felt to him in a kind of mythic epiphany:

Two years ago, mid-summer,I was on Delos location-huntingfor a film; the sun blazed white on the ruins. I wandered around amongst the broken marble, fallen columns. A frightenedlizard slithered into hiding under a tombstone. In- visible cicadas droned away, adding a note of desolation to the empty landscape. And then I heard a creakingsound, a hollow sound, as if coming from the depths of the earth. I looked up, and on the hill I saw an ancient olive tree slowly toppling over, an olive tree on a hill slowly sinking to its death on the ground, a huge, solitary tree, lying. A gash made by the fallen tree revealed an ancient head, the bust of Apollo .... I walked on further,past the row of lions, the columns of the row of phalloi, till I reached a small secret place, the birth- place of Apollo according to tradition. I raised my polaroid [camera] and pressed the button. And when the photograph slid out, I was amazed to see it hadn't registered a thing. I shifted my position and tried again. Nothing. Blank negative pictures of the world, as if my glance wasn't working. I went on taking one photograph after another,clicking away-the same empty squares, black holes. The sun dipped into the sea, as if abandoning the scene. I felt I was sinking into darkness.And when the Film Archives suggested this [current]project,

24. This is so despite Angelopoulos's statementthat "'A' is not me, not Angelopoulos!"The quotation is from Andrew Horton, "What Do Our Souls Seek? An Interview with Theo An- gelopoulos," in: TheLast Modernist: The Films of TheoAngelopoulos, ed. Andrew Horton, Contri- butions to the Study of PopularCulture 66 (Westport:Greenwood Press, 1997),96-110, at 103. A film directed by "A" that is screenedearly in Ulysses'Gaze is never seen, but its soundtrack is that of Angelopoulos's own film Tometeoro vima tou pelargou(The Suspended Step of the Stork, 1991). In his Taxidista Kithira(Voyage to Cythera,1983), Angelopoulos had provided the voice for the actor who plays the protagonist,a film director"who resemblesa younger Angelopou- los" (Horton, TheFilms ofTheo Angelopoulos [above, n. 23], 127). 25. Quotation from Dan Georgakas,"Greek Cinema for Beginners:A Thumbnail History,"Film Criticism,27 no. 2 (Winter2002-2003), 2-8, at 2.

This content downloaded from 83.137.211.198 on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 20:33:12 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Winkler 397

I was only too eager; it was a way out. I'd have given up soon enough, only I discovered something:three reels of film not mentionedby any film historian.I don't know what came over me then; I was strangelydisturbed. I tried to shrug the feeling away, to - to breakfree, but I couldn't. Threereels, perhaps a whole film, undeveloped. The firstfilm, perhapsthe firstglance, a lost glance. A lost innocence. It turned into an obsession, as if they were my own work, my own first glance, lost long ago.

The directorfinds Apollo--or rather,Apollo reveals himself to him-but loses his gaze, his ability to record,realistically as well as artistically,the world around him.26Or does Apollo take his creativity away, symbolically protecting the mysterious nature of art in an age of advanced technology and of the political abuses of art?As Angelopoulos put it when he was writing the film's screenplay:"The filmmaker tries to take a picture of this event, but when he develops it, he sees that nothing appears. You see, the head had emerged from the spot where Apollo, the god of light, had first appeared. The light at such a spot, the source of light, was too strong for the camera!"27 The way in which Angelopoulos presents the film director's account of his experience with Apollo to the viewers of his own film is significant,too, for it subtly reinforces the meaning and importance of this crucial episode. The director tells his story to the woman in a trainstation. He is on board the train,standing in the open door; she is on the platform.Then, while the directoris still giving his account,the trainbegins to move, and the woman has to walk, then run, alongside the train. Soon she jumps on board to hear the end of his story.At the climactic moment of this scene and to our surprise, we then see the two embraceand kiss passionately.At first, this may seem like a plot clichi familiar from dozens of other films: star and leading lady must begin a romance.But the real point is something different.The actresswe see here plays several charactersin the film, both in the present and in the past. In a brief episode later in the film, she will play another lover of the director.More importantly,she will appear as his mother in a long flashbackin which the directorreminisces about his youth. The story of his mystical encounter with Apollo is a reminiscenceas well, but one presented in a radically different way. Other film directorsmight show us, in a flashbackto Delos, what the directorsaw there,but Angelopoulos grants us only a verbal account.Just as the images had been denied the directoron Delos, so the images of the story he tells are now denied us, the viewers. Visually and verbally,with flashback and, in the train-stationsequence, its denial, Angelopoulos weaves together the layers of his complex narrative.The story of Apollo which we hear but do not see points to the elusiveness of memory,of the director'sand, by extension, the viewer's gaze, and of the cinema itself. Revealingly,the images of the train gathering speed while the director is telling his story make for an increasingly

26. The descriptionof the director's experience with Apollo on Delos as given by Horton, The FilmsofTheo Angelopoulos (above, n. 23), 189, does not conform to the text quoted above. Hor- ton, 202, quotes Angelopoulos's own verbal descriptionof the moment, given in an interview about two years before filming Ulysses'Gaze; it, too, is differentfrom what appearsin the film: "Oneday while he is visiting the sacredisland of Delos, the birthplaceof Apollo, from a crack in the ground a marble head of Apollo mysteriously rises from the ground and shattersinto many pieces." 27. Quoted from Horton,The Films of TheoAngelopoulos (above, n. 23), 202 (immediatelyfollowing the words quoted in the precedingnote).

This content downloaded from 83.137.211.198 on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 20:33:12 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 398 InternationalJournal of theClassical Tradition / Winter 2005

blurredbackground on the screen. In the film's final sequence, Angelopoulos will rein- force these points to great emotional effect. The fact that Apollo's head is said to have shatteredtakes on added resonance some time later in Ulysses'Gaze. The film contains an unforgettablesequence in which a gigantic granitestatue of Lenin, toppled and sawed into several pieces, has been loaded onto a barge that slowly floats down a river.We first see the severed head of the statue being put on the bargeby a crane. His encounterwith the head of Apollo inspires the filmmakerto embarkon his search for the unknown film, a symbol of his own "lost innocence"and of the origins of cinema and all art. But will Apollo reveal the secret of the lost film? In the last sequence of Ulysses'Gaze, the director tracks down the lost reels in war- tomrnSarajevo. An old film archivisthas saved them from destruction.He, too, is a preserver of culture and civilization in the midst of war. Togetherwith his daughter and some little children he will soon die a senseless death in a civil-war massacre.But shortly before, the archivist had managed to begin developing the reels of film and had shown some of the film to the director."A captive gaze ... set free at last,"the archivistobserves. We see both men looking at the film strip; overjoyed at the discovery of these images, they break into spontaneous laughter and embrace.We are meant to conclude from this brief scene that the film strip being developed contains images from ninety years ago. The last scene of the film, however, in which the director himself finally projects and looks at the lost film, admits of two differentinterpretations. "There are several ways of looking at this," Angelopoulos has said.28 Angelopoulos shows the director,now completely alone, looking at the screen. We only see the flicker of the projector'slight on an empty screen and hear the projector noise on the soundtrack(Fig. 5). The common, and realistic,view of this scene is that the directorhas indeed watched the old film. This is a view that Angelopoulos himself seems to adopt: "Idid shoot the scenes he sees, but finally we decided not to show them because it was too concrete.... It doesn't matter what is on the film; maybe it's just rushes that were never supposed to be shown."29But there is also a radically different possibility, borne out by the circumstance-apparently unnoticed by critics-that the sound from the projectoris steady and going on for longer than a "leader,"the blank film strip at the beginning or end of a reel, would make possible. Nor do we hear the loud flapping sound of the film strip turning once the last frame of the leader has run through the projector. The steady sound of the projectorextends even beyond the visual part of Ulysses'Gaze. When the image fades out and the end credits appear in white letters on black background, the projector'ssound continues to be audible until everything fades away with the last frame of the film. From this second perspective, Angelopoulos shows us, his audience, what the directorsees or has seen of the long-lost film:nothing. That is to say, the silent film's images, which presumably had been real enough a little earlier,have now faded or vanished, and we are reminded of the director'searlier words: "Nothing. Blank

28. Dan Fainaru,"The Human Experiencein One Gaze: Ulysses'Gaze" (1996 interview), in: Theo Angelopoulos:Interviews, ed. Dan Fainaru,ser. Conversationswith Filmmakers(Jackson: Uni- versity Press of Mississippi, 2001),93-100; quotation at 98. 29. Fainaru,"The Human Experiencein One Gaze,"98. Angelopoulos's entire description of this scene here is worth reading. Cf. Horton, The Filmsof TheoAngelopoulos (above, n. 23), 195: "'A's' eyes fill with tears as he looks toward us and thus up at the screen where the lost film has just finished running."According to Angelopoulos, the threereels of film shot by the Man- aki brothersdo exist, but the chemicalprocess necessary to develop them is unknown.

This content downloaded from 83.137.211.198 on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 20:33:12 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Winkler 399

Fig. 5. Tovlemma tou Odissea.The irretrievableimage on a blank screenat the film's conclusion. negative pictures of the world." As he had said about his experience on Delos: "Thesun dipped into the sea, as if abandoning the scene." Does Apollo here also abandon the scene, turning away from the willful destruction that mankind is inflicting on itself and removing from modern man's gaze the innocent art he protects?The irrevocablevanish- ing of the long-lost but until now miraculouslypreserved images parallels the vanishing of Apollo himself from modern civilization. That,in turn, symbolizes the vanishing of all civilization, which in this film threatensto sink into barbarism.But there is still hope, as the words from the Odysseywhich the directorquotes in the final scene reveal.30Even the scene of the massacre that preceded it is framed by a referenceto the Apollonian. The youth orchestraof Sarajevowas playing amidst civil-war ruins and continuing carnage. Music, after all, is one of Apollo's most importantdomains and a general symbol of culture and civilization. The final minutes in Angelopoulos' mournful work on the nature of history,art, and culture and on the part that the medium of film has come to play in all three rank among the cinema's most haunting moments of visual poetry. Ulysses'Gaze begins with an epi- graph slightly adapted from Plato, which summarizes Angelopoulos's perspective on history and civilization and, by implication, on the Apollonian: "And the soul, if it is

30. Cf. Angelopoulos'sown words on this importantpoint as quoted by Horton, TheFilms of Theo Angelopoulos(above, n. 23), 199. L6toublonand Eades, "Apo tous arkhaiousstous prosapikous mythous" (above, n. 23), note 21, quote the director's final soliloquy and provide the refer- ences to the Odysseywhich his words contain.

This content downloaded from 83.137.211.198 on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 20:33:12 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 400 InternationalJournal of theClassical Tradition / Winter 2005

going to know itself, must itself gaze into the soul."31This alludes to the famous classical maxim "Know Thyself," one of the inscriptions on Apollo's temple at Delphi. It is entirely appropriate,then, that Angelopulos's philosophy of art and culture should be a philosophy of cinema: "Theworld needs cinema now more than ever. It may be the last importantform of resistanceto the deterioratingworld in which we live."32

4. Apollo's Final Frontier

In stark contrastto a work of cinematicart like Angelopoulos's film, a commercialprod- uct designed for easy consumptionby mass audiences can still manage to address some serious points about myth and religion. An example is Episode 33 of the American television series Star Trek;its title is "Who Mourns for Adonais?" (1967), directed by Marc Daniels.33 On an unknown planet, the crew of the spaceship Enterprise encounters Apollo, the last survivor of the ancient gods (Fig. 6). He identifies himself with a thun- derous greeting: "Welcometo Mt. Olympus, Captain Kirk!"His words already reveal that he is a god of knowledge and foresight. The earthlings at first do not know what to make of him, but fortunately a young lady on their crew with a vaguely Greek name- she is called Carolyn Palamas-has the requisite training as an A and A Officer,whose specialty is "archeology,anthropology, ancient civilizations,"as one crew member puts it. (Such an officer appears only in this episode.) The dialogue at this moment is disarm- ing in its naivete; it expresses not only the futuristic but also the general twentieth -century ignorance of classical antiquity:"We're going to need help in all those areas!" Such help Carolyn is ready to provide. The informationshe gives Captain Kirk and the others is largely accurateand only slightly neo-mythological:

Apollo-eh, twin brotherof Artemis, son of the god Zeus and Leto, a mortal. He was the god of light and purity.He was skilled in the bow and the lyre.

The goddess Leto has become mortal for script purposes because this change informs viewers unschooled in Greek mythology that gods have sexual relations with humans and prepares them for the ensuing almost-romance between Apollo and Carolyn. Through this liaison Apollo intends to repopulate his solitary planet with a new race of worshipers. The episode thus addresses some of the main issues that are important in Greek mythology and the literaturederived from it. A god cannot exist without worshipers; in return for his demands-"I want from you what is rightfully mine: your loy- alty, your tribute, and your worship," says Apollo-he offers "life in paradise."Apollo sees himself as the literal and figurativefather of these and future humans. As an infatu-

31. Plato,Alcibiades I, 133b.This was one of Plato's most influentialworks, although some modern scholarsquestion his authorship. 32. Quoted from Andrew Horton, "NationalCulture and Individual Vision"(1992 interview), in: TheoAngelopoulos: Interviews (above, n. 28), 83-88, at 86. The quotationalso appearsin Horton, TheFilms of TheoAngelopoulos (above, n. 23), 3 and 196. 33. Otta Wenskus, "StarTrek: Antike Mythen und moderne Energiewesen,"in PONTESII: Antike im Film (above, n. 3), 128-135, discusses this episode at 132-133 and mentions (130) that the motto of the StarfleetAcademy (Ex astrisscientia) is patterned on that of NASA's Apollo mis- sions (Ex luna scientia).

This content downloaded from 83.137.211.198 on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 20:33:12 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Winkler 401

Fig. 6. StarTrek: "Who Mourns for Adonais?"Apollo in his temple. ated Carolyn says later: "He wants to provide for us. He'll give us everything we ever wanted. And he can do it, too." Thereis also a brief explanationof the origin of religion and mythology from an ap- propriatelyfuturistic perspective. Its neo-mythologicalovertones remind us of Erichvon D~iniken'sChariots of the Godshypothesis.34 Nevertheless, Captain Kirk'sspeculation to Dr. McCoy about Apollo is, overall, in keeping with more rigorous scholarly analysis:

KIRK: Apollo's no god. But-he couldhave been taken for one, though--once. Say,five thousand years ago, a highly sophisticated group of space trav- elers landed on Earth,around the Mediterranean.

34. Erichvon Diniken's pseudo-scientificbestseller Erinnerungenan die Zukunft:Ungelste Rlitsel derVergangenheit (literally, "Remembrances of the Future:Unsolved Riddles of the Past";Diis- seldorf and Vienna:Econ, 1968; rpt. 1976)appeared in Englishas Chariotsof theGods? Unsolved Mysteriesof the Past, tr. Michael Heron (New York:Putnam, 1970; rpt. New York:Berkley Books, 1999, but without the question mark). A companion book--Meine Welt in Bildern: Bildargumentefir Theorien,Spekulationen und Erforschtes (Diisseldorf and Vienna:Econ, 1973)-- was published in Englishas In Searchof AncientGods: My PictorialEvidence for theImpossible, tr. Michael Heron (New York:Putnam, 1974; rpt. New York:Bantam, 1975). A film duly followed the first book: Harald Reinl's Erinnerungenan die Zukunft(1970; English title: Chariotsof the Gods,without question mark).The film's English ads asked: "WasGod an Astronaut?"

This content downloaded from 83.137.211.198 on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 20:33:12 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 402 InternationalJournal of theClassical Tradition /Winter 2005

McCOY: Yes, to the simple shepherds and tribesmen of early Greece creatures like that wouldhave been gods. KIRK: Especially if they had the power to alter their forms at will and command great energy. In fact, they couldn't have been taken for anything else.

Apollo himself explains why belief in classical myth declined and why humans turned away from the gods. His words to Carolynnot only corroborateKirk's speculation about the original intergalacticabode of the gods but also echo ancient perspectives on man's intellectual development from mythosto logos.35Rather surprisingly, Apollo's mention of the overreachingand dangerous ingenuity of the human mind even parallels the theme of Sophocles' famous pollata deinaode from Antigone:

APOLLO: We're immortal, we gods. But the Earth changed, your fathers changed. They turned away until we were only memories. God [sic] cannot survive as a memory.We need love, admiration,worship, as you need food. CAROLYN: You really think you're a god? APOLLO: In a real sense we weregods. We had the power of life and death. We could have struckout from Olympus and destroyed.We had no wish to destroy.So we came home again. It was an empty place without worshipers, but we had no strength to leave. So we waited, all of us, through the long years .... Even for a god there'sa point of no return. ... But I knew you would come, you striving, bickering, foolishly brave humans. I knew you would come to the stars one day.

When angry, this Apollo goes into neo-mythological Zeus mode. He does not shoot ar- rows but, as a "far-shooting"Apollo of the future, hurls lightning bolts and even causes a storm (Fig. 7). When he demonstratessome of these powers, Carolynbrings up another fundamental question inherentin myth and religion: "How can they worship you if you hurt them?" These moments show that even as hokey a product of mass culture as this can exhibit a certain degree of sophistication.But there is more. A rathersinister side to the apparently benign father figure of Apollo becomes explicit when he paints a picture of the paradise he envisions as the result of his union with Carolyn.He tells her:

You'll all be provided for, cared for, happy. There is an order of things in this universe. Your species has denied it. I come to restore it. And for you: because you have the sensitivity to understand, I offer you more than your wildest dreams have ever imagined. You'll become the mother of a new race of gods. You'll inspire the universe. All men will revere you almost as a god yourself.

35. The scholarly locusclassicus for this is WilhelmNestle, VomMythos zum Logos:Die Selbstentfal- tung des griechischenDenkens von Homerbis auf die Sophistikund Sokrates,2nd ed. (1941; rpt. Stuttgart:Kraner, 1975). On this see now Glenn W. Most, "FromLogos to Mythos," in: From Myth to Reason?Studies in the Developmentof GreekThought, ed. RichardBuxton (Oxford and New York:Oxford UniversityPress, 1999),29-47.

This content downloaded from 83.137.211.198 on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 20:33:12 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Winkler 403

Fig. 7. StarTrek. Apollo hurling lightning at the Enterprise.

Apollo's speech points to recent twentieth-century totalitarianism, in which an all- powerful individual, accorded quasi-divine status, receives unquestioning obedience from his subjects so that a new and perfect race of supermen may achieve their earthly paradise in a new order under his leadership. Perhaps it is not by accident that Apollo, when he refers to the happiness of future humans, raises his right arm to a horizontal level in front of his body in a hint at the Fascist salute, a gesture emphasized by a medium close-up shot (Fig. 8). We hardly need Kirk later telling Carolyn about Apollo: "He thrives on love, worship, attention .... Accept him, and you'll condemn all of us to slavery, nothing less than slavery."This realizationis based on Apollo's earlier show of force and on his words to Kirk: "We shall not debate, mortal .... But what I ask for I insist upon." The episode's conclusion, although melodramatic and with an Apollo reduced to tears, still manages to be emotionally involving even to viewers who are not Trekkies. Modern and secularized homotechnologicus refuses to believe in and worship a tradi- tional god. "We'veoutgrown you," Kirktells Apollo, "you asked for something we can no longer give." (This is despite Kirk's earlier token affirmationof religion: "Mankind has no need for gods. We find the One quite adequate.")Such a refusal leads to Apollo's extinction. Rather touchingly, the source of his interplanetary power-in science- fiction terms, his "energy"and "technology,"which he controls through a mysterious

This content downloaded from 83.137.211.198 on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 20:33:12 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 404 InternationalJournal of theClassical Tradition / Winter 2005

Fig. 8. StarTrek. Apollo's gesture during his vision of the future human race.

"organ"in his chest-turns out to be his temple, which the Enterprisedestroys. Apollo now chooses death: "The time is past," he realizes, "thereis no room for gods." This in turn prompts Kirkto a poignant rdsumbabout the ancient Greeks,on which the episode ends: "They gave us so much. The Greek civilization, much of our culture and philosophy come from the worship of those beings, the way they began, the Golden Age. .. ." Up to a point, this ending justifies the episode's title, which derives from high culture and may at first strike viewers as pretentious. "Who Mourns for Adonais?" is a quotation from line 415 of Shelley's "Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats" (1821), which in turn is based on the ancient Greek poems by Theocritus and Bion on the death of the proverbially handsome youth Adonis.36The death of the young poet and the extinction of the god of poetry are instances of loss and causes for mourning. In Shelley's poem, the Muse mourns for Adonais. But in today's age of advanced tech-

36. Theocritus15 (Syrakosiai& Ad6niazousai: "The Women of Syracuse,or The Womenat the Festi- val of Adonis");Bion 1 (EpitaphiosAd6nidos: "Lament for Adonis"). Texts and English transla- tions of these poems are easily accessiblein TheGreek Bucolic Poets, ed. J. M. Edmonds (Loeb Classical Library;rev. ed.; Cambridge:Harvard University Press;London: Heinemann, 1938; several rpts.), 175-195 and 385-395. ForShelley see Shelley'sAdonais: A CriticalEdition, ed. An- thony D. Knerr(New York:Columbia University Press, 1984);cf. JenniferWallace, Shelley and Greece:Rethinking Romantic Hellenism (Basingstoke: MacMillan; New York:St. Martin'sPress, 1997),pp. 109-118.

This content downloaded from 83.137.211.198 on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 20:33:12 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Winkler 405

nology and general historical and cultural amnesia, where is the Muse to mourn for Apollo?37

5. Divine Inspiration

Now from Apollo to the Muses. Films in which these goddesses appear are few. Best known today is the animated Disney feature Hercules(1997), a musical comedy-adventure directed by John Musker and Ron Clements. Before the credits, the camera moves over dusty images of ancient ruins and works of art to a close-up of an amphora on which we see both a large painting of Hercules wrestling the Nemean lion and above it a small one on the vase's neck showing five dark women. A male off-screen narrator mean- while introduces us to ancient Greece and Hercules and portentously intones: "What is the measure of a true hero? Ah, that is what our story is-." But a female voice interrupts him, and we see the women on the vase come to life. They are none other than the Muses.38 They immediately assert their authority:

FIRSTMUSE: Will you listen to him? He's makin' the story sound like some Greek tragedy. SECONDMUSE [to narrator]: Lighten up, dude! THIRDMUSE: We'll take it from here, darling.

NARRATOR[resigned]: You go, girl.

37. In science fiction, the name Apollo appearsbecause of the names from Greekmythology that have been given to most constellationsand that are also prominentin space travel.The television series BattlestarGalactica (1978) and relatedTV films have a CaptainApollo, who has advanced to CommanderApollo in BattlestarGalactica: The Second Coming (1999). William Hanna and JosephBarbera's animated Jetsons: The Movie (1990), an expansionof their 1960stelevision series, includes someone called Apollo Blue. But Ron Howard's Apollo13 (1995),a film about that ill-fated moon mission, makes no mention of Apollo at all. - Several characterscalled Apollo appear in film stories set in modern times. In the silent era, B. A. Rolfe's crime drama Miss 139 (1921) features a ProfessorApollo Cawber,and in D. W. Griffith'sreligious melo- drama TheWhite Rose (1923), set in the AmericanSouth, a characteris nicknamedApollo. An- otherApollo appearsin Sydney Morgan'sShadow of Egyptof 1924."Johnny Apollo" is the protagonist's alias in Henry Hathaway's 1940filmnoir of that name. AnotherApollo is in Daniel Mann'sA Dreamof Kings(1969), based on a work by Greek-Americanauthor HarryMark Pe- trakisand set in Chicago'sGreek community. The blackboxer Apollo Creed is the eponymous hero'sformidable antagonist in four of the five Rockyfilms directedby JohnG. Avildsen (1976) and Sylvester Stallone (1979, 1982, 1985).In the late 1990s, Greekmythology made a popular comebackto television in the series Hercules:The Legendary Journeys and in some television or video films spun off it, such as Hercules:Zero to Hero(1999). Greek gods, including Apollo, play prominentroles in this Hercules' adventures.So do the Muses. Earlier,The Illiac [sic] Passion (1967), directed by Gregory J. Markopoulos and loosely based on Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound,also features an Apollo, although its ancient model did not. Other curios with an Apollo are the silent TheTriumph of Venus(1918), directed by Edwin Bower Hesser,and TheAf- fairs of Aphrodite(1970), directed by Alain Patrick.The 1980stelevision series Magnum,P. 1. featured Dobermanguard dogs named Apollo and Zeus. 38. CarmineGallone's epic Gli ultimigiorni di Pompeii(The Last Days of Pompeii,1926) brings the Muses to life in a similarfashion, if within a differentplot context:in "a clever insanity scene," "Glaucusstares at a fresco of Zeus and the dancing Muses, and the figures on the wall suddenly come alive!"Quoted from Solomon, TheAncient World in theCinema (above, n. 2), 82.

This content downloaded from 83.137.211.198 on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 20:33:12 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 406 InternationalJournal of theClassical Tradition / Winter2005

With snappy gospel songs, the chorus of these five-not nine-Muses now takes over and provides a commentaryon the film's action. The narratoris never heard from again. (His voice is that of CharltonHeston, who, in his time, had himself played real and fictional ancient heroes.) But these Muses first have to introduce themselves to their audiences, who may not otherwise recognize them: "We'rethe Muses, goddesses of the arts and proclaimers of heroes . . ." Having left the frame inside which they had been painted, they introduce, to continuing gospel rhythms, the mythical prehistory of Her- cules, beginning with Zeus' defeat of the Titans: "He hurled his thunderbolt,/locked those suckersin a vault .... And that's the gospel truth!"This last becomes their regular refrain. Despite their warning about Greek tragedy in the prologue, the film in good tragic fashion has the Muses return throughout the story being told. With their singing and dancing at appropriatemoments in the story, they provide musical interludes and comment on the action,just as the chorus on the classical Greekstage had done in its stasima, the odes it performedon the stage. The Muses provide the cue-or is it the inspiration?- to the film's gleefully irreverentAmericanized and multiculturalnarrative about a Her- cules who grows from "zero to hero." Lest energy flag, they may even exhort one another: "Tellit, girl!"That the facts of Hercules' life and adventures preserved in classical mythology take a backseat to their fanciful retelling is unavoidable. Despite some ex- cesses, as with a satyr called Phil (for Philoctetes) who becomes Hercules' friend and helper alongside his winged horse Pegasus, the film is a witty rewriting of Greekmyth as a satire of modemrnconsumerism and celebrity cults. "Herc"becomes a sports superstar and, for example, the sponsor of "GrecianExpress" credit cards. His romanticentangle- ments with Megara ("Meg"),a slinky and sultry redhead with a New Yorkaccent, and his defeat of Hades, his arch-enemy,lead to the inevitable happy ending on Mt. Olym- pus. Here the Muses, prompted by Hermes ("Hit it, ladies!"), sing their final song ("A star is born").As had been the case with the exit song (exodos)of the chorus on the Greek stage, the purpose of the Motown Muses' final ode is to bring home to the audience the lesson to be learned from the story they have been watching:

Just remember,in the darkesthour within your heart's the power for makin' you a hero, too. So don't lose hope when you're forlorn ...

Although there is nothing profound here, it is amusing to see modern American obses- sions, especially those with teenage self-esteem and the turmoil caused by adolescent stirrings of love and sex, being projected onto a story of venerable antiquity that is, at the same time, being told with state-of-the-artanimation technology. But not least because of the infectious rhymes and rhythms of our Muses, we leave the theater happy and entertained.Small wonder that the film inspired an animated television series and a video sequel.39 Two years after this Hercules,Sharon Stone in the title role of Albert Brooks'sHolly- wood-insider comedy TheMuse provides a differentkind of story inspiration,this time to

39. Solomon, TheAncient Worldin the Cinema(above, n. 2), 123-124, points to a number of the film's cinematicsources and outlines its titanic commercialsuccess.

This content downloaded from 83.137.211.198 on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 20:33:12 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Winkler 407

various film producers, writers, and directors. Among these are Rob Reiner, Martin Scorsese, and James Cameron,for whose successes she is responsible.This thoroughly modern Muse is a highly material girl who expects lavish and expensive presents and treats:"The happier she is, the betterMuse she is. Don't you want the best Muse you can get?"On the other hand, she causes considerabledomestic upheaval in the life and mar- riage of the film's main character,a failing screenwriter."Never get too close to a Muse," he is warned by a more experienced friend. And: "Youdon't want to piss off a Muse. If you get them angry,they can do the opposite of what they're supposed to do." As befits a sex symbol, Stone even has a moment of callipygian nudity. But at the end a plot twist reveals her to be not a real Muse but an impostor, an escapee from a mental institution with a multiple personality.However, yet anothertwist gives her the upper hand, at least for a while. And a particularcomment about Hollywood as producer of illusions and catererto the fantasies of people around the globe---"Thisis Hollywood.... People here believe anything, don't they?"-may even remind us of all the neo-mythologismthat the dream factory regularlyturns out.

6. Terpsichore'sEpiphany

The most fascinating of all films featuring the Muses is Alexander Hall's musical comedy-romance Down to Earth(1947), in which another Hollywood sex symbol, Rita Hay- worth, plays Terpsichore.(Hayworth's popular honorificwas "love goddess.")Although it suffers from a stereotypicalplot, this film is of considerableinterest for its presentation of Greek culture in modem society. The plot is about one Danny Miller, a young and struggling producer and writer-director,who is in rehearsalsand then try-outs for his Broadway musical "Swinging the Muses." In this show two American aviators, whose plane has crashed into Mt. Parnassus,promptly encounter the Muses-a novel kind of the traditionalgradus ad Parnassum.Bizarrely, the chief Muse, Terpsichore,later wants to marryboth of them. But the real Terpsichoreup in the heavens gets wind of this windy story.Outraged, she comes down to earth,takes over the lead in the show-as herself, of course, although she does not reveal her true identity and takes a differentname-and proceeds to change the show from a brash musical to something authentic.(She is, after all, the expert.) The contrastbetween both versions of "Swinging the Muses" is instructive. Our first glimpse of how its producerintends it to be is the film's biggest production number, a brassy and swinging big-band song in the musical and verbal style popular among youngsters of the 1940s. Eight of the stage Muses, holding little toy lyres as a visual reminderof the Apollonian art of poetry and song, begin by introducingthemselves and the show's topic, then call upon Terpsichore:

In section Two-Four-SixA-B at your public library books on Greekmythology are gettin', gettin' dusty on the shelves. It's nigh on two thousand years since we started our careers. No one digs us, it appears, so we must, we must talk about ourselves. We'rethe nine Muses, nine Muses, and we live on Mt. Parnassus;

This content downloaded from 83.137.211.198 on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 20:33:12 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 408 InternationalJournal of theClassical Tradition / Winter 2005

we're the goddesses who bring art and culture to you. Terpsichore,Terpsichore, give with the news of the Muse!

These hip-swinging Muses are swinging hipsters, up on the latest jive. So is Terpsichore, who now takes over:

Well,hello, Jack,what's new outside? I just got back from a chariotride. I heard I've been elected to tell you what we Muses do. The jive is that from way back when our kiss could inspire many men to sing, to dance, to act, to paint; it's up to us if they is or ain't. For instance, take a chick like me; they call me Terpsichore. I'm the goddess of song and dance; I put the ants in the dancers'pants. The nine of us in our careers kissed three million guys in two thousand years.

The Muses now proceed to provide a catalogue of "the characterswe kissed," a witty potpourri of artists from RenaissanceEurope--e.g. Bellini-down to popular America- e.g. Benny Goodman (Fig. 9). But the real Terpsichoreis outraged and tells her sisters about Miller's show. This leads to a clever and funny dialogue scene among the heavenly Muses:

TERPSICHORE:It's disgraceful! AMUSE: What's so disgracefulabout that? A MUSE: We'vebeen glorified in song and story for centuries. AMUSE: Shakespeare,Walt Whitman, Robert Burns! TERPSICHORE:But this barbarian isn't Shakespeare, Whitman, or Burns. Why,he's portrayingus in a low and vulgar manneron the public stage. [TheMuses gasp.] According to him, I'm nothing but a man- chasing trollop. THEMUSES: Oh no! TERPSICHORE:Oh yes! And as for the rest of you, he says you kissed over three million men. [Anothergasp.] Imagine that! A MUSE: That's scandalous! A MUSE: We haven't kissed a man in over two thousand years. A MUSE [demurely]:Except Apollo-once. A MUSE: That could only come from America ... A MUSE: Who does this savage think inspired Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Rembrandt? TERPSICHORE:Do you know who he's telling the world we inspired? The man who invented the skinless weenie-a frankfurter! A MUSE: A frankfurter-how ghastly!

This content downloaded from 83.137.211.198 on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 20:33:12 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Winkler 409

Fig. 9. Downto Earth.The AmericanMuses and one of their earthly visitors in the original version of "Swingingthe Muses."

This is followed by Terpsichore'sdecision to take matters into her own divine hands (Fig. 10).After all, as she says: "Thetheater is myprovince. It belongs to me. I'll show this Millerimbecile a thing or two." In all this we have a case of neo-mythologism as seen through the lens of irreverent American popular culture. By contrast, the scene from "Swinging the Muses" as re- choreographedby the real Terpsichoreand the general reactionto it are revealing in what they tell us about the supposedly proper attitude toward classical culture. Gone now is all the original exuberance.Jazzy rhythmshave been replacedby virtually atonal music that could appeal only to die-hard devotees of Stravinsky or Sch6nberg.A pretentious vocalese replaces most dialogue, and the sexy swing of the Muses has turned into artsy modern dance. The setting is dark and depressing; everything has become high-brow and is subjected to a dose of severe seriousness (Fig. 11). The Glory That Was Greece is meant to awe the spectators,not to entertain them. But can we only appreciateancient Greece if we adopt a reverentialattitude? Such a perspective is unappealing to modern society and thereforecannot prevail. To put it in popular American terms paraphrasing Duke Ellington,such Muses as these "don'tmean a thing since they ain't got that swing" any more. Small wonder that their audiences are falling asleep, despite the fact that Terp- sichore makes sure that she takes center stage and appears in attractiveclothing-after all, the filmmakershave to show off their star (Fig. 12). Not only that, but the theater- goers are mainly older high-society types, whose culturalpretensions the film briefly sat-

This content downloaded from 83.137.211.198 on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 20:33:12 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 410 InternationalJournal of theClassical Tradition / Winter 2005

Fig. 10. Down to Earth."Oh no!" The real Muses, aghast, learn from Terpsichore(back to camera) what is happening to their reputation.

irizes. After a performance of the new show, some elderly upper-class art connoisseurs approach Terpsichore with fulsome if utterly clich6d words of praise: "My dear, magnificent, magnificent! Sheer poetry-poetry of movement. Why, every scene a painting!" One of these art experts is an old lady with an appropriatelystarchy name ("I'm Mrs. Fenimore Hume"), the president of the Pure Art Forum. But it is evident that this kind of show will never open on Broadway, and Terpsichore eventually relents in order to save it from being a flop. Ironically, what is supposed to be the accurate presentation of Greek culture is just as inauthentic as the "wrong" one had been: wrong costumes, silly head- dresses, stereotypical d~cor. On this subject, an earlier scene is telling. Danny Miller and Terpsichore, whom he knows only as Kitty, are rehearsing. They are seen on the set and near a gigantic-and, of course, inauthentic-prop representing, of all things, a tragic mask. Terpsichore is reading from her script:

TERPSICHORE:"I'm Terpsichore, the daughter of-of-." Look, Mr. Miller, it says here "Zeus,"but it's all wrong. Terpsichoreis not the daughter of Zeus. My father-I mean, herfather-was Dionysus. MILLER: No, no, Zeus.

TERPSICHORE:That's the popular belief. But I happen to know the facts. It's Dionysus. MILLER: I didn't put this show together with thumbtacks. It so happens that I looked up this particular item in the encyclopedia.

This content downloaded from 83.137.211.198 on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 20:33:12 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Winkler 411

Fig. 11. Downto Earth.Terpsichore (center) in her version of "Swingingthe Muses."

TERPSICHORE:I hate to disillusion you. But the encyclopedia is wrong. MILLER: No, Kitty-you know more than the EncyclopediaBritannica?

TERPSICHORE: About things like this, yes. MILLER: Aha!

TERPSICHORE:And now that we're on the subject: you got a lot of things wrong- MILLER: For instance?

TERPSICHORE:For instance, you've got me drinking ambrosia. Ambrosia is food. Nectar is the drink. And your scenery-why, it doesn't bear the faintestresemblance to Mt. Parnassus.As for your costumes- MILLER: Look,Kitty, I haven't time to fiddle around. Do you mind?

As ancientauthors and modem encyclopedias and handbooks on Greekmyth unequivo- cally tell us, the Muses are indeed the daughters of Zeus and not of Dionysus. So the "real"Terpsichore is wrong, and the "barbarian"Miller is right. On the other hand, he is wrong and she is right about nectar and ambrosia.She is also right about his set decora- tions, but her own set design is just as wrong as his had been. But none of this is a problem for the film, just as most audiences would not have taken offense at-or even have

This content downloaded from 83.137.211.198 on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 20:33:12 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 412 InternationalJournal of theClassical Tradition / Winter2005

Fig. 12. Down to Earth."Poetry of movement":Terpsichore as star of her own show. noticed-the strange costuming of the stage Muses in the original version of "Swinging the Muses" in the scene discussed above. Thereeight of the Muses had dark pink ribbons on their white dresses, while Terpsichorewas distinguished from them by a dress entirely in pink. Moreover,all these Muses wore head decorationsof dark pink grapes. The pink color--the Homericterm oinops("wine-dark") will immediately come to any classical scholar's mind-and even more the grapes are obvious hints at Dionysus. So why does Miller have the daughters of Zeus dressed as if they were indeed daughters of Dionysus? The Muses in Terpsichore'sreworking of the show no longer hold lyres, but they also do not wear these grapes. But why don't they? No explanation is ever provided. Nor does there seem to be a problem for the film's directorand screenwriterswith having one of the Muses admit that she once kissed Apollo. Apollo is mentioned for his close association with the Muses, his half-sisters,but nowhere in the ancient sources does he ever kiss any of them. The moment is the more remarkablein that, to PuritanAmerica, a kiss of the sort implied here between Apollo and one of the Muses would come uncom- fortably close to the violation of a sexual taboo. From this modem perspective, even if the Muses werethe daughtersof Dionysus, it would be equally inappropriatefor them to kiss Apollo because they would be his nieces. (Apollo and Dionysus are both sons of Zeus.) But then, what kind of kiss might this have been, anyway? The only context for the

This content downloaded from 83.137.211.198 on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 20:33:12 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Winkler 413

Muses' kiss mentioned in Down to Earthis that of artistic inspiration, not eroticism or love. So again Apollo is an unsuitableobject for such a kiss, because as the god of music and poetry and as leader of the Muses, he hardly depends on them for inspiration. A minor point is the Muses' age, or ratherthe chronology of their existence.Both the "wrong"Muses and the real Terpsichorerefer to a period of "two thousand years." But two millennia back from the mid-twentieth century brings us only into the Roman, not the Greek,period of antiquity.So the Muses are considerablyolder, even by millennia. Presumably the real Terpsichorewould know how old she is. The reason for the erro- neous chronology is that it does not matter: the scriptwriters'"two thousand years" serves to take us back to a generic antiquity,and, for all intents and purposes, that is quite sufficient.Who needs pedantry or exactitude?Neo-mythologism prevails. Thereis, however, anotherside to all this. Down to Earthis a loose sequel to director Hall's HereComes Mr. Jordan (1941), a romanticcomedy about reincarnation.In order to appeal to the widest possible audience and to avoid disturbing anybody's religious sen- sibilities,this film's view of the afterlifeis entirely secularized.The titularfigure serves as a kind of modemnCharon (his name echoes the colloquial phrase "crossingthe Jordan" for dying) who organizes the dead souls' passage to heaven. (An airplane is their means of transportation.)This set-up duly recursin Down to Earth,where it makes for a bizarre mixture of Greek antiquity and American modernity, as when we see Terpsichoreap- pealing to Mr.Jordan, at the beginning, for permission to come to earth and, at the end, for being allowed a reunion with Danny Miller,with whom she has fallen in love. In a flash-forward,Mr. Jordan grants her a glimpse of Danny and herself at the moment of his boarding the heavenly plane once his time has come. Love conquers all-even at the price of mixing charactersand plot devices that had betterremained separate. The power of Hollywood to induce willing suspension of disbelief in its paying customers seems limitless. So we may conclude that the filmmakerscombine Greek myth, neo-mythologism, and their remarkableconceptions of Greek art and architecturein a gleefully uncon- cerned manner,at the same time throwing in a hefty measure of "cinematicintertextual- ity,"as it might be called. Only scholars are liable to tear their hair. But, if they do so, do they not also run the risk of being as stuffy as the members of the PureArt Forum? What is most telling in the scenes discussed is the film's dual view of classicalantiquity. If Greek myth is to be appealing to modern mass audiences, it has to be updated and in the process distorted; it cannot avoid becoming neo-mythological.This is so because the real past-in Leopold von Ranke's famous phrase, wie es eigentlichgewesen ("how it actually was")-is either unrecoverableor, to most people today, too alien and remote even to be of interest. Disney's Hercules,with its multicultural charactersand their relentlessly Americanized names-"Herc," "Phil," "Meg"-is a recent case in point.40There is a lesson in this for all those who want to keep antiquity alive today, for most people derive their usually neo-mythologicalknowledge from films and television. In our society at large,books on Greekmythology and classical cultureare indeed gettin' dusty on the shelves, but the stories told in the popular visual media save the day for chicks like Terpsichore.

40. Such abbreviationshave a long history,however, and are not exclusively American(or low- brow). In George BernardShaw's Androclesand the Lion (1913), for example, Androcles becomes "Andy"(and even "Andy Wandy"in his baby talk during his first encounterwith the lion); his nagging wife Megaerais "Meggy."

This content downloaded from 83.137.211.198 on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 20:33:12 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 414 InternationalJournal of the ClassicalTradition / Winter2005

7. Down to EarthAgain

Two films that were inspiredby DownTo Earth illustrate the positive and the negative pos- sibilities of such neo-mythologism.The positive example came four years later,with Tor- ben Anton Svendsen's musical-comedy-romanceMad mig pd Cassiopeia(1951; "Meet Me on Cassiopeia"),a classic of Danish cinema.41This time the Muse Polyhymnia comes down to earth from the constellationCassiopeia, the gods' abode, to help a struggling composerwith an operettacurrently in rehearsal.She becomes attractedto him, then falls in love with a dashing aviator.But Zeus tries to interferebecause a Muse should not min- gle too closely with mortals. When Polyhymnia resists his paternal authority,he, too, comes down to earth. He appears at a costume ball where his Olympian garb is entirely apropos.Romantic and funny plot complicationsensue. Zeus even lands in jail for drunk and disorderlyconduct. He eventually returns to the heavens and forces Polyhymnia to return as well. But a happy ending is in store for all concerned,just as the composer's show is a hit. The film is one of the most light-hearted comedies about the ancient gods, if not without bitter-sweet overtones. Its Muse, played by a radiant Bodil Kjer,is utterly irre- sistible. The film presents a literal version of the inspiration she provides: when she blows her divine breathor even her cigarettesmoke on people, they are immediately af- fected in a positive way. In view of my earlier discussion of "WhoMourns for Adonais?" (above, pp. 400-405) it is worth noticing that in Mad migpd Cassiopeia,too, the gods and the Muses no longer reside on Mt. Olympus or Mt. Parnassus.In an age that no longer believes in them and that has seen mountain climbers explore the highest peaks of Greece, the ancient divinities have to be relegated to outer space. Only in that way can their sudden appearanceamong humans preserve the unexpected and supernaturalaura that divine epiphanies need. If Med mig pd Cassiopeiais an elegant souffl4 of a film, the opposite is true for Robert Greenwald'sXanadu (1980). The charm of the earlierfilm is sadly lacking, and its Terpsi- chore,a bland blonde played by pop singerOlivia Newton-John,is no match for Rita Hay- worth's. This time around,the artisticachievement, if such it can be called, around which the plot revolves is the opening of a disco-music roller rink, the eponymous Xanadu. In Los Angeles, a young graphicartist makes his living painting advertisementsbut aspires to higher things. In frustration,he tears up one of his drawings and throws it out of the window. But the wind carriessome of the scraps to a mural on which the nine Muses are painted. They now magicallycome to life during the film's firstmusical number.Its vapid lyrics are sung, strangely enough, by a male voice ("I'm alive.... Suddenly I am here today;/seems like forever from today.... Is this really me? I'm alive.. ."). Since the film reflects the youth culture of SouthernCalifornia in the late 1970s, one of the Muses then approachesthe young man on rollerskates, kisses him, and immediately vanishes. Natu- rally he falls in love with this mystery girl, in due course finds her, and the predictablero- mance ensues. Eventually,she discloses her true identity as Terpsichoreto him:

TERPSICHORE:I'm not as I appear to you. Have you ever heard the expression "kissedby a Muse"?I am-I'm a Muse.... I come from Mt. Heli- con. I'm a daughter of Zeus. I have eight sisters. My real name is

41. An affectionatetribute to it is the short film by LarsChristiansen, Bag omfremviseren (Two for Cassiopeia,a LoveStory; 2000), whose plot reworks the earlierfilm's story line.

This content downloaded from 83.137.211.198 on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 20:33:12 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Winkler 415

Terp-[she is interruptedby his kiss].Look up the word "Muse"in a dictionary.... Read it.

SONNY [readsfrom a dictionary that just happens to be handy]: "Muse": ... "Any of the nine sister goddesses in Greek mythology presiding over song and poetry and the arts and sciences ... "

When Terpsichorethen turns on the television set, she appears in an old film noirthat is being broadcast. Her black-and-whiteself and other charactersalso interact with her modern self. This is meant to illustrate to the viewers of Xanaduthe supernaturaland eternalnature of the Muses. Terpsichorecontinues her culturallesson with a brief, if neo- mythological,recapitulation of a point made in Down to Earth:

We've been painted by Michelangelo.Shakespeare's written sonnets about us. Beethoven'splayed music for us. We'renot supposed to feel emotion or show any feelings. Muses are just supposed to inspire. I fell in love .... It was a mis- take. I broke the rules.... I'll love you forever.

To ensure a happy ending, the plot has Sonny discover and magically enter the Muses' mural. But he finds himself and his Muse in a supernaturallimbo, from which the off- screen voice of Zeus bids him return. (Film lovers note with chagrin that distinguished British actor Wilfrid Hyde-White provides this voice.) But Zeus is rather befuddled about time; being immortal, he forgets the difference between a moment and eternity and thus mistakenly grants Terpsichoreher wish to remain with her earthly lover, if only as a mortal. A second voice, also off-screen but female this time, interferes.This seems to be Zeus' wife Hera, who often in Greek myth lords it up over her hen-pecked husband. Here she calls him "dear"in a condescending tone and manipulates him into granting the Muse's request as if she were her mother. She also turns out to be as clue- less about time as Zeus is. Xanaduinspired the Razzie Awards for WorstAchievement in film, and its director won, if that is the word, the first such award in the WorstDirector category. (O tempora, o Musae!)The film also holds a special place in cinematic history in that dancer Gene Kelly had his last role in it. He plays a relic from the swing era who had been inspired by the same Muse in the 1940s and who is still in love with her. Ironically,in 1944 Kelly had co-starred with Rita Hayworth in Charles Vidor's glossy musical romance Cover Girl. In homage to CoverGirl, the characterhe plays in Xanaduhas the same name as did his characterin the earlier film. The German release title of CoverGirl-Es tanztdie Gifttin("The Goddess is Dancing")-brings us full circle to our original Hollywood Muse. In a variation of the plot device in which gods or heroes from classical mythology come down to earth, statues of them may come to life. The best-known example is WilliamA. Seiter's One Touchof Venus(1948), based on a Broadwaymusical with a score by KurtWeill. (Ava Gardner is this film's love goddess.) A comic variationon this plot device is Lowell Sherman'sThe Night Lifeof the Gods(1935), in which an eccentricinventor brings statues of the gods in the MetropolitanMuseum of Art in New Yorkto life with his magic ring. (Among them is Apollo, but he takes a backseatto some of the other gods, especially Bacchus,who lends himself more readily to comedy.) In WalterLang's There's No BusinessLike Show Business(1954), one of the earliest CinemaScope extravaganzas,a song-and-dance number has life-size statues of young women come to life and dance. They are mute and are never identified as the Muses, but their number is nine, they wear

This content downloaded from 83.137.211.198 on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 20:33:12 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 416 InternationalJournal of the Classical Tradition / Winter 2005

pseudo-ancientgarb, and the sceneryaround them features some classical-lookingcolumns and amphoras. A Muse of a radically differentcolor-red-appears in TerryM. West's slasher film Bloodfor the Muse (2001).An alienated young clerk in a video store becomes obsessed with Melpomene, the Muse of tragedy,whom he believes he must attractby the serial murderof call girls. Not surprisingly,this film was never released theatrically.

8. The Returnof Apollo and the Nature of Neo-Mythologism

The preceding sections of this paper have examined differentapproaches to Apollo and the Muses on the screen. Despite their variety, all of the examples discussed have one thing in common:none faithfullyadheres to the literaryor artistictradition that has come down to us from antiquity.This is because invention is necessary for adaptationsof classical culture to modem society and its mass media. Even the lowest level to which cinematic representationsof the Olympiansmay descend reveals something about the nature of such adaptations, if only unintentionally.A case in point is Arthur Allan Seidelman's Herculesin New York(1970), with bodybuilderArnold Schwarzenegger,billed as "Arnold Strong,"in the title role. Scenes set on Mt. Olympus-filmed in CentralPark, with modern trafficaudible on the soundtrack-include several of the gods. One handsome young male, wreathed and briefly seen instructinga younger god, presumablyCupid, in the art of archery,turns out to be not Apollo but Hermes. Apollo has only a verbal cameo, as it were, when Hercules, newly landed on Earthand getting acquainted with the modern world, engages in the following dialogue with a New Yorkpretzel vendor unaware of who the hulky naif beside him in a taxi cab really is:

VENDOR: I used to know a Greekguy.... His name was Apollo. I never found out what his second name was.

HERCULES: I know Apollo. VENDOR: You do? Well, is this a small world? You know Apollo? Gee. I wonder where Apollo is now.... HERCULES: He's back home. VENDOR: He went home, huh? Yeah,well, he was all the time talking about how homesick he was .... Say,he was a real nice guy, Apollo. HERCULES:Conceded. They say there's nobody handsomer than Apollo. VENDOR: Handsome?Apollo? Oh, you must be kidding. Handsome?With the big black wart on the end of his nose? And the little beady crossed eyes? ... I wonder if Apollo ever got married. You know he was all the time looking for a wife ... HERCULES:Diana and Terpsichoreare in love with him. I think Hebe is at- tracted,too.

VENDOR: That just shows you how desperate some women could be ...

Their talk at cross purposes is representativeof the low level of verbal and visual humor in this film. So is the carefreemixture of Greekand Romannames, with Zeus being mar-

This content downloaded from 83.137.211.198 on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 20:33:12 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Winkler 417

ried not to Hera but to Juno, etc. Evidently,where mythology in popular culture is concerned, anything goes. This case, however, is particularlytelling because Hercules does not even know that, according to Greek myth, the goddess Hebe whom he associates with Apollo has nothing at all to do with the god but is none other than his-Hercules' (better:Heracles')--own Olympian wife. This distortion is probably an instance of the filmmakers'sheer ignorance.But who in the targetaudience cares? Even as infantile a film as Herculesin New Yorktells alert viewers something about the nature of filmic approachesto classical myth and culture.They become, in their own right, part of the endless matrix, as it might be called, of modern retellings of classical myths which are the most powerful archetypesof our popular stories. A cinematicrein- carnationof a mythical figure closely associated with Apollo explains this phenomenon to us. The Trojanprincess Cassandrahas received the gift of prophecy from Apollo, but she is fated to make only negative predictions that no one will believe. Near the end of Giorgio Ferroni'sLa guerra di Troia(1962), Cassandraaddresses Aeneas, the film's hero, during the night of Troy'sfall.42 1 quote her words from the English-languageversion:

Troy is living her last night. For millenniums to come, men will search in her ashes to find the vestiges of her noble walls .... The horrors we have seen in these years [of the TrojanWar] will always live in legend.

The very film in which she makes this prophecy about the survival of Troy proves her right, in regardboth to the sensational discovery and excavation of its site by Heinrich Schliemannand to Troy'squasi-mythical presence in popular culture.The cinema and related visual media are today the most powerful means to preserve the memory of ancient legends and myths. In this, of course, the neo-mythological outweighs the accurate.La guerradi Troiais itself an example of such a legend in that it is a very loose adaptationof parts of Homer's Iliadand Virgil'sAeneid. Moreover, this film is only one of many that have reworked stories from classical mythology since the earliest days of the cinema. A sequel to Ferroni'sfilm released the same year that Cassandramade her prophecy was appropriatelycalled Laleggenda di Enea.43The fact that it featuresfootage from the earlier film when Aeneas reminiscesabout the fall of Troycleverly illustratesthe survival of ancient myths in a new medium, since here a modern retelling,that of Laguerra di Troia,itself becomes elevated to a quasi-mythicallevel when it is reprised in Laleggenda di Enea. Appropriately,Aeneas is played by the same actor in both films. But this actor is none other than musclemanSteve Reeves, who impersonateda number of heroes from ancient myth, most famously Hercules. So did several other actors.Audiences immediately recognize the interchangeabletype of hero they are watching in any one film and feel at home in his company.The same, if on a smaller scale, is true for Cassandra.44Ultimately, these figures are all members of a large mythic-heroicfamily which well illustrates the principle of cinematic"intertextuality."

42. The film's Englishtitles are TheWooden Horse of Troy,The Trojan Horse, and TheTrojan War. 43. The film's English titles are TheAvenger, The Last Glory of Troy,and Warof the Trojans.It was directedby GiorgioRivalta. 44. Cassandrasappear in MarcAllegret's L'amantedi Paride(The Loves of ThreeQueens or TheFace ThatLaunched a ThousandShips, 1953), Mario Camerini'sUlisse (Ulysses, 1955), Franco Rossi's television Odissea(1968), Michael Cacoyannis's The Trojan Women (1971, played by Genevieve Bujold), Enzo G. Castellari'smodern farce Ettorelo fusto (Hectorthe Mighty, 1975), Woody

This content downloaded from 83.137.211.198 on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 20:33:12 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 418 InternationalJournal of theClassical Tradition / Winter2005

Cassandra'sobservation about the survival of Troy in popular legend is borne out nowhere more spectacularlythan in WolfgangPetersen's Troy (2004). The words of Thetis to her son Achilles early in this film even echo those of Ferroni'sCassandra: "They will write stories about your victories for thousands of years."But Cassandraherself is miss- ing from Troysince the aristocracyof Troyand the rosterof the Greekheroes fightingin the TrojanWar have been rigorouslylimited in number for the sake of a compact plot. On a narrativelevel, Troyextensively changes ancient literature,especially Homer's Iliad,in a particularlynoteworthy example of neo-mythologism.Most of the Olympiangods, for instance, are conspicuous by theirabsence. Zeus rates only one verbalmention. By contrast, Apollo is of majorimportance, and the verbal and visual referencesto him reveal the variety that we may find in today's retellingsof ancientmyth. As he was in the Iliad,Apollo is still the chief guardianof Troy."45The Trojans'elite guard of warriorsare even called Apol- lonians. "He thinks the sun god will protecthim," says Agamemnonof Priam,and Priam tells Hector: "Apollo watches over us." Hector,however, is ratherskeptical: "And how many battalionsdoes the sun god command?"he asks his fatherin return,with a phrase reminiscentof Josef Stalin'scontemptuous question about the number of divisions com- manded by the pope.46Princess Briseis, here Apollo's chief priestess and a memberof the Trojanroyal family, is a much more importantfigure in the plot of Troythan she was in Homer.But despite all this, Troydoes not even seem to have a temple of Apollo within its walls, unless the sanctuaryto which Briseisflees in the film's last sequence and in which Agamemnon and Achilles both die is to be understood as such. Instead, Apollo's main temple is implausibly located on the beach outside the city walls. Since it is entirely un- protected,it easily falls into the hands of Achilles and his Myrmidonsupon their landing and is despoiled and desecrated.Its architecturefeatures large stone statues, both standing and sitting, that are reminiscentof ancient Egyptian statuary,just as the city of Troy displays an eclectic mix of Minoan, Egyptian, ancient Near Eastern,and archaicGreek

Allen's comedy MightyAphrodite (1995), Chuck Russell's TheScorpion King (2002),John Kent Harrison'sHelen of Troy(2003), a television epic, and in the animatedHercules films and series mentioned earlier.Noteworthy television adaptationsof Aeschylus had Cassandrasplayed by MariangelaMelato in Luca Ronconi'sOrestea (1975) and by Helen Mirrenin Bill Hays's The SerpentSon (1979), a three-partBBC adaptation of the Oresteiawritten by Kenneth McLeish and FredericRaphael. Apollo appears in both. The Britishversion is particularlyremarkable for its distinguished cast of actresses(also Claire Bloom, Sian Phillips, Diana Rigg, and Billie Whitelaw).The short-livedBritish television comedy series Up Pompeii(1971) featured an un- funny Roman Cassandra. 45. In MarinoGirolami's L'ira di Achille(Fury of Achilles[USA], Achilles [UK], 1962),a neo-mythological muscleman epic that still demonstrates its makers' close familiarity with the Iliad, Apollo plays a significant part as well, although he remains off screen (unlike Athena or Thetis).On first meeting Chryseis,the captive daughter of Apollo's priest Chryses,Agamem- non boasts to her: "Iam the king of kings."Unimpressed, she counters:"And I am consecrated to Apollo, the god of kings."Apollo miraculouslyreveals a treasureto Chryses with which to ransom his child; Apollo's voice is heard on the soundtrack.He later causes a sudden storm that mysterously kills many of the Greeks;this is the film's equivalent of the plague Apollo sends them in Book 1 of the Iliad.The omniscientnarrator portentously intones: "Likedarkest night, the mighty god descended and wreaked his fury [sic] on the Grecianfleet." 46. Stalin's saying is quoted in several versions and with varying dates and addressees. The most famous is in Winston S. Churchill,The Second World War, vol. 1: TheGathering Storm (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,1948), 135: "'Oho!' said Stalin.'The Pope! How many divisions has he got?' "

This content downloaded from 83.137.211.198 on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 20:33:12 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Winkler 419

decoration,statuary, and architecture.In front of Apollo's temple we see a visual repre- sentation of Homer's "far-shootingApollo," which reminds us of the god's first appearance in Westernliterature in BookOne of the Iliad.This is a golden statue of the god, who is sitting, knees raised, and bending his bow (Fig. 13). It is adapted from statues of kneel- ing archers on the east and west pediments of the temple of Aphaea on the island of Aegina.47In antiquity,no example of this type of statuaryexisted for Apollo. In the most astonishing twist on ancientmyth and religion,this statue and, by implication, the god it represents,suffer a fate which serves to illustratethe neo-mythological extreme to which modern directorsor screenwritersmay go in order to present a com- pelling story to audiences only loosely familiarwith antiquity."The sun god is the patron of Troy,our enemy,"Achilles says to his soldiers once they have taken Apollo's temple, and he exhorts them to loot and plunder.Achilles is duly warned against this course of action-"Apollo sees everything. Perhaps it is not wise to offend him"--but pays no heed. In this he resemblesnumerous figures from Greekmyth and tragedy who come to a well-deserved bad end in punishment for their hubris. But Achilles goes furtherthan merely utteringblasphemous words. He decapitatesthe statue of Apollo with a strokeof his sword. In his attitude toward Apollo, the characterfrom ancient literaturewhom he resembles most closely is Mezentius, the Etruscan leader who is first in war against Aeneas and the surviving Trojansin the Aeneid.Virgil memorably introducesMezentius

Fig. 13. Troy.Achilles and the statue of "far-shootingApollo."

47. Forillustrations see BrunildeSismondo Ridgway, The Severe Style in GreekSculpture (Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1970),figs. 5-7; she describes the temple on pages 13-17 and the statues on page 16.

This content downloaded from 83.137.211.198 on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 20:33:12 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 420 InternationalJournal of theClassical Tradition / Winter2005

with the phrase contemptordivum: "spurner of gods."48Petersen's Achilles is such a man. He later tells Briseis,his prisoner:"I think your god is afraidof me" and rhetoricallyasks her: "where is he?" This question about the presence or absence of a god or gods--or of God-despite people's professed beliefs and despite the predominanceof religious arti- facts and buildings in all civilizations is equally ancient and modern;here, in a commercial work of popular culture,it effectivelypoints to the eternalproblem of man's place before the divine. Hector will later comment to Priamand the Trojanelders about Achilles' sacrilege:"Apollo didn't strike the man down. The gods won't fight this war for us." So when an anxious friend wishes for Apollo's protection for Hector before his duel with Achilles, an encounter which audiences know Hector will not survive, his words ("Apollo guard you, my prince!")are a poignant reminder that, in the world of Troyjust as in the modern world, humans are essentially on their own. Except for Hector, the Trojansare misled by their understanding of the divine. The omen of an eagle holding a serpent in its talons is misinterpretedas a sign of victory sent by Apollo. Laterthe Trojansdiscover the wooden horse among a number of dead bodies lying on a beach now deserted by the enemy. They recognize the devastation caused by a plague and connect all this to the Greeks' sacrilegious treatment of Apollo. A Trojan priest, presumablythe film's equivalent of Laocoon,explains: "Theydesecrated the temple of Apollo, and now Apollo has desecratedtheir flesh." He is, of course,wrong. Tellingly, the real reason for the plague is never given, for the fact that Apollo does cause a plague among the Greeks in Book One of the Iliadis inadequate as an explanation here. Neo- mythologism can be as mysterious or unresolved in its implicationsas authentic ancient myth and literatureoften were. Troyprovides us with a worthwhile example of the value of the formerto think again of the latter. A short six months after the release of Troy,Apollo is again referred to on the cinema screen. Oliver Stone's Alexanderdisplays different types of statuary of most of the Olympian gods, including Apollo's, in a few scenes. These statues are made to look like gilded bronze or painted marbleand serve only decorative purposes. The same is largely true of the numerous verbal referencesto the gods, chiefly Zeus, Dionysus, and Apollo. But Apollo plays a more importantpart in one early scene, although he is not present or directly involved. Young Alexander tames Bucephalas by observing that the horse is afraid of his shadow. He calms him down by turning him around, at the same time ex- plaining to him that shadows are insubstantial and harmless; they are only cast by Apollo's sun. The scene is the first instance of heroism on Alexander's part in Stone's film, and the mention of Apollo, not reported in Plutarch'saccount of this famous moment, is an appropriateand charmingaddition.49 Remarkableas the retelling of Greekmyth in Troymay appear to today's audiences, it has a close relative in an earlierfilm based on Homer, Mario Camerini'sUlisse (Ulysses, 1954).A brief comparison is instructive.As is Petersen'sAchilles, Camerini'sOdysseus, too, can be contemptuous of gods. In Polyphemus' cave, he invokes the principle of xenia (guest friendship, hospitality) over which Zeus guards only for the purpose of manipu- lating the Cyclops. More importantly,and in a manner both neo-mythological and paral-

48. Virgil,Aeneid 7.648. 49. Plutarch,Alexander 6. Forjust one exampleof the analogy of Alexanderand Apollo cf. the close similarityin theirportraits on the two coins reproducedby RobinLane Fox, Alexander the Great (1973;rpt. London and New York:Penguin, 2004), Plates 1 and 2 (following page 288). Fox was historicaladvisor on Stone's film.

This content downloaded from 83.137.211.198 on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 20:33:12 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Winkler 421

lel to Achilles' decapitatingthe statue of Apollo, this Odysseus topples a statue of Nep- tune during the conquest of Troyand later,when his ship is caught in a storm,pushes another one overboard."There's no Neptune out there,"Odysseus shouts to his frightened crew,thereby denying if not the very existence then at least the power of the god over the element he rules. (The use of the sea god's Romanname may be explained by the film's Italianorigin.) Somewhat inconsistentwith this is Odysseus' belief in Athena,his protec- tress. "Preparethe fires for a sacrificeto Athena,"he tells his men at one point. Odysseus' hubris toward Poseidon explains the god's persecution of him. Still in Troy,Cassandra curses him and prophesies him exile and death at sea. The latter part of her prophecy,as we know from the outset, will not be fulfilled;the film does not address the issue of false prophesies deriving from true divine inspiration. Odysseus' contempt of Poseidon contrastswith the far more religious atmosphere on Ithaca.Penelope has a large wall painting of Athena in her chambers.Presumably it had been there before Odysseus left for the TrojanWar; it is thereforeconsistent with his belief in the goddess. But Apollo is even more prominent in this cinematic island king- dom. The courtyardof Odysseus' palace has several large stone sculptures of lions atop columns which resemble the row of stone lions on Delos (Fig. 14). Lions generally sym- bolize royalty and power.soSo they do here, but in addition they may even be intended to referspecifically to Odysseus who on his returnwill fall upon the suitors as a lion does on his prey. More importantin Camerini'sfilm than the lions, however, is the contest of the bow, which will determinewhich suitor Penelope will accept for her new husband. It takes place during games in honor of Apollo, and we see a large bronze statue of Apollo beforewhich the suitors make sacrificebefore the games. The archergod is indeed an ap- propriatedivinity to have such a contest held in his honor, and the film indirectlytakes up the referenceto Apollo made in the Odysseyby Antinous, chief among the suitors.51In the film, Antinous first objectsto the archerycontest: "This is no part of Apollo's games." Later a suitor who has unsuccessfully attempted to string Odysseus' bow exclaims: "Apollo is offended. He's taken away our strength."Antinous sarcasticallyreplies: "How can Apollo take away what you never had?" Next to Neptune-Poseidon, Apollo is the most frequently mentioned god in Ulysses.Since Camerini's film has been popular for decades, the prominenceof Apollo in Troymay derive from that in the earlierfilm. If so, we have a case of one neo-mythologicalstory influencing another-a telling illustration of the mythicalmatrix with which the cinema preserves our ancient traditions.

In the past, most scholars disdained such neo-mythological retellings as a matterof course and pointed to their inaccuraciesas the basis for value judgments. I have here attempted to show its narrowness and have argued for the value of close examinationsof what, to a cursory glance, appears to be unworthy of criticalattention. The cinema may not be one of the "media of salvation"for classical studies, as classicist George Hadzsits

50. Anotherrow of stone lions patternedafter those on Delos appears in RobertRossen's Alexan- derthe Great (1956) before the palace of Philip of Macedonia.A large statue of Athena Proma- chos-i.e. the goddess in full warrior garb-stands nearby.All this statuary signals Philip's and then Alexander'smilitary power and imperialambition. 51. Odyssey21.265-268. Similarly, in Rossi's OdisseaAntinous comfortsthe other suitorswho have failed to string Odysseus' bow with the reminder:"Tomorrow is the festival of Apollo the archer.Let's postpone the contest till tomorrow.He will grant us the necessarystrength."

This content downloaded from 83.137.211.198 on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 20:33:12 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 422 InternationalJournal of theClassical Tradition / Winter2005

Fig. 14. Ulysses.The "Delian"row of lion statues at Odysseus' palace on Ithaca. memorablycalled it decades ago in his plea to classical scholars not to ignore film.52But even so, critics may wish to keep two things in mind. Cinema and its neo-mythologism have kept interestin antiquity alive outside the halls of academe and beyond the dreamy spires of universities. No form of scholarship or high art has ever had such worldwide reach. Does not a critical analysis and interpretationof the neo-mythological aspects in popular adaptations of older poetic texts illuminate these texts' influences on modem culture-their reception, as scholars now term it? But this process is nothing new. It already obtained for the very origins of Westernliterature, the Homeric epics. As George Steinerhas put it, the Iliadas we have it is "the product of an editorial recension of ge- nius, of a wonderfully formativeact of combination,selection and editing of the volumi- nous oral material"that existed before and that served as its source. This in turn set the pattern for the "perennialubiquity of translationsfrom Homer, of Homeric variants, re- creations, pastiches and travesties."Steiner appropriatelyrefers to "the complexity of modulation"that is found in the English-languageadaptations of Homer (as it is in other languages).53He refersonly to literarytexts, but we may easily think of visual narratives told in the complex language of film as well.

52. George Depue Hadzsits, "Media of Salvation,"The Classical Weekly, 14 no. 9 (December 13, 1920), 70-71. I discuss this articleand its implicationsin my "Introduction"to ClassicalMyth and Culturein theCinema (above, n. 3), 3-9. 53. "Introduction"to Homerin English,ed. GeorgeSteiner (London: Penguin, 1996),xv-xxxiv; my quotationsare from pages xxviii, xvii, and xvi.

This content downloaded from 83.137.211.198 on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 20:33:12 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Winkler 423

Today,historical figures, heroes and heroines of myth and legend, and gods and goddesses all come back from the past or down to earth and visit us on our screens. In our visual culture, classical antiquity in general and Apollo and the Muses in particular are a continuing presence. Only churls unaware of the fluid characterof myth will de- plore this, even if neo-mythologism in the cinema is not always as sophisticated as we might wish it to be. But then, classicalliterature itself long ago revealed to us the true nature of myth. None other than Apollo's Muses, the very goddesses who inspire epic poets, tragedians,historians, and other writers, are reportedby the archaicpoet Hesiod to have confessed, without any apology whatever:

"Weknow to tell many lies resemblingthe truth, but we also know, when we want, to pronounce truths."4

54. Hesiod, Theogony27-28; my translation.

This content downloaded from 83.137.211.198 on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 20:33:12 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions