Phaedra

Between his great successes Never on Sunday (1960) and Topkapi (1964), director Jules Dassin helmed this 1962 updating of the ancient Greek tale of a stepmother's tragic love for her husband's son, which was told earlier by Euripides (Hippolytus), Seneca (Phaedra), and Racine (Phèdre). In Dassin's modern take, Phaedra (played by the director's wife-to-be Melina Mercouri) is married to Greek shipping magnate Thanos (Raf Vallone), who asks her to go to England to convince Alexis (Anthony Perkins)—a son from Thanos's previous marriage, who Phaedra has never met—to come home. During her stay in London, the pair find themselves irresistibly attracted to each other, and enjoy a few torrid nights together. When Alexis returns to Athens, he and Phaedra vacillate between passion and standoffishness, until Thanos discovers their affair, leading both to choose death over dishonor. Their fates are juxtaposed with the sinking of one of Thanos's ships, the Phaedra (launched in an extravagant opening sequence), and the wailing of a Greek chorus (the families of the crew lost in the disaster) over the narrative's double tragedy. At the time of its original release, most critics derided Phaedra for being absurdly overblown and they described the pairing of middle-aged Mercouri and callow Perkins as laughably incongruous. But while it remains a deeply flawed movie in many respects, Dassin's hyper-melodramatic approach to the material is morbidly fascinating, and Perkins has an unforgettably over-the-top final scene as he drives his sports car recklessly along roads at the edge of seaside cliffs, screaming about dying while the radio plays Bach's Toccata and Fugue in F major. Bowing on Blu-ray, this is a strong optional purchase. (F. Swietek)