Episode 13 of renowned filmmaker Chris Marker's mythical masterpiece about…
The Owl's Legacy: Tragedy, or the Illusion of Death
- Description
- Reviews
- Citation
- Cataloging
- Transcript
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“The institution of tragedy plays a fundamental role in a democracy.” --Cornelius Castoriadis
Greek tragedies were originally like TV shows before the age of streaming. They were performed once, and only once says scholar Oswyn Murray. But despite their transitory nature, they embraced themes that have spoken to humanity for centuries—and across cultures.
This episode looks at the particular cross-cultural pollination between Greek and Japanese theater. A Japanese woman remembers first engaging with Greece through Theo Angelopoulos’s film The Traveling Players, based on the myth of the House of Atreus. Angelopoulos and writer Vassilis Vassilikos find affinities between the rhythms of Noh, Kabuki, and classical Greek drama. Meanwhile, actor and theater director Alexis Minotis argues that in the modern world, only Greeks can truly understand the Greek tragedies—a position belied by the clips seen throughout the episode from a Japanese production of Medeaperformed in the ancient theater of Epidaurus, and lauded by Greek actor and Minister of Culture Melina Mercouri.
“We should raze the Sorbonne and put Chris Marker in its place.” —Henri Michaux
“The primary pleasure of the series, which is incredibly inspiring, is linked to this great banquet of participants, the sum of knowledge they invoke, but above all to the playful flows the editing establishes between their ideas, constructing a formidable network of meanings, historical and cultural perspectives - a veritable encyclopedia of development." —Le Monde
“Why did we have to wait so long for this electrifyingly intelligent film?” —Le Point
“Thirteen words to uncover an entire civilization and reestablish its considerable influence on our modern societies.” —Les Inrockuptibles
“With erudition, Chris Marker questions in each episode what remains Greek within us.” —Philosophie Magazine
Citation
Main credits
Marker, Chris (film director)
Peck, Bob (narrator)
Other credits
Music, Eleni Karaindrou [and 3 others]; camerapersons, Andreas Sinanos, Jimmy Glasberg, Peter Chappell; editing team, Khadicha Bariha, Nedjma Scialom.
Distributor subjects
Historical Anthropology; Ancient Greece; Chris Marker; France; PhilosophyKeywords
"The Owl's Legacy"; Icarus Films; France; Chris Marker; Ancient Greece; culture; ,doc,art; history; shod
WEBVTT
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[MUSIC PLAYING]
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June \'87, a lane of
Golden Gai in Shinjuku.
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Since we will surely
be accused once again
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of provoking these encounters
between Greeks and Japanese,
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wouldn\'t it be better to
establish, at once, that they
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didn\'t need us to meet?
00:00:48.720 --> 00:03:12.580 align:middle line:90%
00:03:12.580 --> 00:03:15.005 align:middle line:90%
[SCREAMING]
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00:04:08.510 --> 00:04:11.000 align:middle line:90%
[EERIE MUSIC]
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[SAD MUSIC]
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[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
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When one side is right
and the other is wrong,
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that\'s melodrama.
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It\'s not drama.
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And when both sides are
right, it\'s tragedy.
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[UPBEAT MUSIC]
00:10:43.788 --> 00:11:18.240 align:middle line:90%
00:11:18.240 --> 00:11:21.160 align:middle line:84%
I expect a lot of you
have been to the theater.
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And if you have, I
expect you enjoyed it.
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A theater is fun.
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It\'s a really
exciting place to be.
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And like so many of the
things in our lives,
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theater was invented
by the Greeks.
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This is what theaters looked
like when they first began.
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This is an ancient
Greek theater.
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The first thing you notice
is that it\'s got no roof.
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The weather in
Greece is so good,
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for most of the year, that
you can do all sorts of things
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out of doors.
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The next thing you
see is how big it is.
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The theater at Epidaurus
holds 15,000 people.
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That\'s much bigger than
any theater in Britain.
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You could fit in all the
primary schools in your borough
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with no trouble at all.
00:12:08.630 --> 00:12:11.680 align:middle line:90%
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Some of the posher
seats had backs.
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They were for the
important people.
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There they are.
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But the ordinary spectators just
perched on the rows like this.
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So they probably brought
cushions with them,
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particularly as the
plays went on all day
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Unless ancient Greek bottoms
were remarkably tough,
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they\'d have needed them.
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But although the seats
weren\'t very comfortable,
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they did get a very good view.
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But one must remember
that the Athenians, when
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they went to the theater,
they sat in seats on one day,
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those seats on the hillside.
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From those seats, they
had seen the sacrifice
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of 40 or 50 bulls.
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These bulls had then been
cut up in front of them,
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and had been
distributed to them.
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They had eaten those
bulls, or those cows,
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on that particular occasion.
00:13:06.180 --> 00:13:08.550 align:middle line:84%
They had drunk the
wine of Dionysus.
00:13:08.550 --> 00:13:10.800 align:middle line:84%
The next day, with
monumental hangovers,
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after having slept
in the streets,
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they arrived in the theater
to watch the tragedy.
00:13:14.940 --> 00:13:19.520 align:middle line:84%
And they saw, instead
of an animal sacrifice,
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they saw what was essentially a
human sacrifice, the sacrifice
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of a man who represented the
city, who was a king, who
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was the symbol of the city.
00:13:33.300 --> 00:13:35.570 align:middle line:84%
And I think that it\'s
extremely difficult for us
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to understand the relationship
between creativity
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and performance in
Greek literature,
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unless we replace it in its
ritual and its social context.
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00:15:46.290 --> 00:15:47.642 align:middle line:90%
[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
00:15:47.642 --> 00:15:52.470 align:middle line:90%
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We don\'t believe that the
classics are oppressive at all.
00:15:57.270 --> 00:15:59.130 align:middle line:84%
On the contrary, we
believe that they
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contain, besides great poetry,
also a very modern quality,
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informed point of view, like
the ancient Greek drama, which,
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as a form, is very,
very modern, much more
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modern than the
adaptations they do today
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from the ancient Greek material.
00:16:19.230 --> 00:16:21.460 align:middle line:84%
Like the adaptations
of Jean Cocteau
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or [INAUDIBLE] or [INAUDIBLE].
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[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
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[TRAGIC CHANTING]
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00:17:22.069 --> 00:17:24.300 align:middle line:90%
[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
00:17:24.300 --> 00:17:42.480 align:middle line:90%
00:17:42.480 --> 00:17:44.778 align:middle line:90%
[SAD MUSIC]
00:17:44.778 --> 00:19:47.620 align:middle line:90%
00:19:47.620 --> 00:19:50.110 align:middle line:90%
[SOFT MUSIC]
00:19:50.110 --> 00:20:12.022 align:middle line:90%
00:20:12.022 --> 00:20:13.810 align:middle line:90%
[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
00:20:13.810 --> 00:20:20.781 align:middle line:90%
00:20:20.781 --> 00:20:23.266 align:middle line:90%
[SCREAMING AND GRUNTING]
00:20:23.266 --> 00:20:28.236 align:middle line:90%
00:20:28.236 --> 00:20:30.721 align:middle line:90%
[ANGRY MUSIC]
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00:20:56.788 --> 00:20:58.766 align:middle line:90%
[SAD MUSIC]
00:20:58.766 --> 00:22:35.531 align:middle line:90%
00:22:35.531 --> 00:22:38.016 align:middle line:90%
[SCREAMING]
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[APPLAUSE]
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We are so happy, I must say
in English, that you are here.
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We have learned, from
you, many things tonight.
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In many ways, Greek
literature possessed
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that transitory quality,
which is possessed also
00:24:15.500 --> 00:24:17.945 align:middle line:90%
by television.
00:24:17.945 --> 00:24:23.450 align:middle line:84%
A quality where, for most
of us, we watch one night,
00:24:23.450 --> 00:24:28.400 align:middle line:84%
we think about it, and then
it passes out of our lives.
00:24:28.400 --> 00:24:31.310 align:middle line:84%
In the same way, it
was not until very late
00:24:31.310 --> 00:24:35.930 align:middle line:84%
in the classical period that
tragedies were ever repeated.
00:24:35.930 --> 00:24:40.460 align:middle line:84%
A tragedy was heard once, and
a man\'s reputation was made,
00:24:40.460 --> 00:24:43.970 align:middle line:84%
a chorus\' reputation was
made, the man who staged it,
00:24:43.970 --> 00:24:46.810 align:middle line:84%
the impresario\'s reputation
was made on that one occasion.
00:24:46.810 --> 00:24:49.460 align:middle line:90%
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And yet, it was
crafted for eternity.
00:24:53.750 --> 00:24:58.550 align:middle line:90%
00:24:58.550 --> 00:25:01.300 align:middle line:90%
[UPBEAT MUSIC]
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Distributor: Icarus Films
Length: 26 minutes
Date: 1989
Genre: Expository
Language: French; German; English
Closed Captioning: Available
Interactive Transcript: Available
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