Médée

This a very raw take of the famous Greek mythical figure - Medea. This movie version of Medea achieved international recognition for its primal depiction of this Greek mythological classic and more importantly - the only acting performance ever delivered on the big screen by opera singing legend Maria Callas. Maria Callas, an opera singing legend who is of Greek origin, gives a spectacular and powerful performance as Medea. While the movie is produced in Italian, you will forget that you are watching a film in another language. There is not much dialogue in this film and the English subtitles work well. Spectacular cinematography, costume, and makeup are used in this movie. However, there are some major flaws to the background used for this movie which will be noticeable to the attentive observant. There is also much gore which will certainly put off many viewers. While the director tries to take his own twist on this famous play by Euripides (the famous Greek playwright who lived in the 400s BC), I don’t find Pasolini delivers at the same level of writing like that of Euripides. Although I expected a better movie production of this famous play, I must say this film gives us the only documented acting performance of Maria Callas – and she is brilliant. It is unfortunate this was Maria Callas’ only performance on the big screen.