While it seems a little strange to begin with a spoiler for a 2,600 year old story (one would assume many people already know the tragic tale of the downfall of the Theban king), for those rare few who do not I must give a word of warning: director Philip Saville begins the film, under the opening credits, by revealing (in unfortunately dated slow-motion camera technique, using weird hallucinogenic camera angles) the central mystery of the play.
This move, though, is merely a foreshadowing of Saville's additional odd directorial choices (intercutting flashbacks to the regicide at some more inappropriate moments, for example; suddenly having the king and his advisors sitting among the ruins of a Greek amphitheatre which, one would think, would not have been in RUINS when they were originally built; or even something as obvious as knowing that when Oedipus calls his citizens "children of Cadmus" that he doesn't literally mean children, but of the bloodline of Cadmus -- so there is no need to have a handful of waifish, pre-pubescent boys kneeling at the king's first entrance so that he can admonish the "children" to arise.)
You will rarely see a hammier performance than that of Christopher Plummer as Oedipus. His interminably long pauses as he tries to work through his emotions bring to mind a lower- echelon drama school's production of Hamlet while, on the other end of the spectrum, his shouting, scenery-chewing antics in scenes opposite Orson Welles as Tiresias and Richard Johnson as Creon merely show how he is outclassed by his scene partners.
The final bit of icing on this baklava, as it were, must be reserved for the performance of a young Donald Sutherland as the Chorus leader. Almost totally unrecognizable under a hideous black pageboy wig, with a voice that has been re-dubbed, he sounds like and resembles a tunic-wearing Prince Valiant in an old Steve Reeves Hercules movie. Since there is already a mash-up of accents (Plummer is Canadian, Lilli Palmer is German and the rest British), one can only think that Sutherland's dubbing is less because his accent doesn't quite fit in with his fellow Thebans, but that the poor young actor simply couldn't speak the lines with any acting chops. I'd love to hear the original.
This move, though, is merely a foreshadowing of Saville's additional odd directorial choices (intercutting flashbacks to the regicide at some more inappropriate moments, for example; suddenly having the king and his advisors sitting among the ruins of a Greek amphitheatre which, one would think, would not have been in RUINS when they were originally built; or even something as obvious as knowing that when Oedipus calls his citizens "children of Cadmus" that he doesn't literally mean children, but of the bloodline of Cadmus -- so there is no need to have a handful of waifish, pre-pubescent boys kneeling at the king's first entrance so that he can admonish the "children" to arise.)
You will rarely see a hammier performance than that of Christopher Plummer as Oedipus. His interminably long pauses as he tries to work through his emotions bring to mind a lower- echelon drama school's production of Hamlet while, on the other end of the spectrum, his shouting, scenery-chewing antics in scenes opposite Orson Welles as Tiresias and Richard Johnson as Creon merely show how he is outclassed by his scene partners.
The final bit of icing on this baklava, as it were, must be reserved for the performance of a young Donald Sutherland as the Chorus leader. Almost totally unrecognizable under a hideous black pageboy wig, with a voice that has been re-dubbed, he sounds like and resembles a tunic-wearing Prince Valiant in an old Steve Reeves Hercules movie. Since there is already a mash-up of accents (Plummer is Canadian, Lilli Palmer is German and the rest British), one can only think that Sutherland's dubbing is less because his accent doesn't quite fit in with his fellow Thebans, but that the poor young actor simply couldn't speak the lines with any acting chops. I'd love to hear the original.