Oedipus Rex (1957)
Directed by Tyrone Guthrie, Abraham Polonsky

Film Review

Sophocles' Oedipus Rex (a.k.a. Oedipus the King) is not only a pinnacle of Ancient Greek theatre, it is also one of the keystones of world literature.  The play may have been written almost two and half millennia ago but it still has an electrifying resonance, as it toys with a question that has vexed the human mind since the dawn of time: do human beings have free will, or are our destines already marked out for us, immutable etchings on the tapestry of time?  The impact that Oedipus Rex has had on western literature cannot be understated, and it even lent its name to Freud's most famous complex.  Bizarre, then, that such a well-known and influential play should have to wait until 1957 before it was first made into a full-length film.

The most striking (and maddest) thing about Tyrone Guthrie's film adaptation of Sophocles' play is that instead of distancing itself from its Ancient Greek origins it embraces these to the fullest extent, and in doing so ends up as a work of astonishing dramatic power.  Guthrie, one of Britain's most esteemed stage actors, had recently directed a production of Oedipus Rex for the Canadian Stratford Festival, using William Butler Yeats' translation, and this highly stylised, minimalist production provided the basis for his film adaptation.  Guthrie had directed three films for television before this but this was his first film for the cinema.  He was assisted by a more experienced director, Abraham Polonsky, who was on a Hollywood blacklist at the time (after his refusal to testify before the HUAC during the McCarthy anti-Communist purge) and is best known his for coldly realist film noir The Force of Evil (1948).  Polonsky's technical know-how and Guthrie's expertise as a stage director resulted in a film that is both brilliant and uniquely fascinating.

In keeping with the best-known tradition of Ancient Greek theatre, the entire cast are obliged to wear masks, most of which are something you would expect to encounter in a nightmare.  Modelled on bare skulls, partially decomposed birds or something that would be more at home in a seriously low budget sci-fi movie, the masks are so alarmingly unreal that the protagonists are scarcely recognisable as human beings.  Rather, they resemble monstrous automata enacting some kind of unspeakable ritual that is somewhere between a Black Mass and an episode of The Muppet Show filmed in the deepest pit in Hell (Birmingham, probably).  The entire play takes place within a ludicrously small space, a raised platform that looks like an altar for a blood sacrifice, surrounded by a featureless blue-grey cyclorama.  On paper, this must sound cheap and tacky, but on the screen it is startlingly (and inexplicably) effective.

Guthrie's decision to make the characters resemble puppets was presumably intended to mock rather than endorse Oedipus's belief that he is a victim of divine powers.  From the outset, we see that the Theban king is the architect of his own doom, and that what appears to be the workings of Fate is actually the consequence of his own ill-judged actions.  (Tell a man his future and naturally, by doing everything he can to avoid this outcome, he will only end up making the prophesy a reality.)  The protagonists start out as freakishly sinister marionettes but acquire an unmistakable humanity as the plot unfolds, and in the end we scarcely notice the masks, or at least we see through them to the soul that lies behind.

Needless to say, the performances are as strident and stylised as the over-elaborate masks, and this adds to the sense that what we are watching is a demonic ritual rather than a piece of theatre.  As Oedipus, Douglas Campbell has an astonishing presence, filling the screen with his power and majesty as a tyrannical monarch whilst saturating our hearts with the pathos of his predicament.  As he rants and rages behind his beautifully sculptured mask, he looks like he is about to punch his way through the screen, and when his unintended crimes are revealed to him he becomes a figure of abject pity, a mighty behemoth reduced to broken down wreck of a man.  Who says an actor's face needs to be visible for him to give a great performance?

The cast (mostly habitués of the Canadian Stratford Festival) includes two actors who were virtual unknowns at the time but went on to become two of sci-fi's most enduring icons. Playing the Messanger is Douglas Rain, who would later find lasting fame as the voice of HAL 9000 in Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).  In the Chorus is a 26-year-old William Shatner, almost a full decade before he first took command of the USS Enterprise in Star Trek.  Now we know why Shatner acts as he does.

An oddity of a film from just about every angle, Tyrone Guthrie's Oedipus Rex manages to be both faithful to the original play (looking almost as it would have done when first staged in the 5th century BC) and astonishingly easy to engage with.  It takes none of the self-serving liberties that Philip Saville's glitzier, star-studded 1968 version does, and is all the better for that.  By staying true to Sophocles' timeless play, and unconsciously venturing into Jim Henson territory as he does so, Guthrie serves up a meditation on free will and predestination that is as engrossing as it is cutely weird.

Film Synopsis

As a deadly plague threatens the ancient city of Thebes, its esteemed ruler, King Oedipus sends his brother-in-law Creon to consult the Oracle at Delphi.  Creon reports that the plague is directly attributable to the murder of the previous king, Laius, and will go only after the murderer has been found and punished.  To save his people, Oedipus makes a solemn vow to find the miscreant, little knowing that he is himself Laius's assassin.  It all began, many years ago, when King Laius was warned by the Oracle that he would be killed by his own son.  To avoid this fate, he ordered that his infant son be bound and slain.  The boy was saved by a shepherd and grew up in ignorance of his real identity.  As a young man, he would indeed kill Laius and, through a bizarre set of circumstances, end up marrying his own mother, Jocasta.  That man was Oedipus...