Highly Overrated But Still Good

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Circa 1196 B.C. , in a decade in which a tribe of Achaeans from Greece commanded by Agamenon engagement war a prosperous and thriving city nearly the mouth of Hellespont , called Ilium of Troy . It was a big city with high walls and four gates , being destroyed by a violent war . The details on this war stayed in legend throughout Dark Ages of Micenic civilization . Four centuries later , they were immortalized by an illustrious Greek poet named Homer on his plays titled ¨Iliad¨ and ¨Odyssey¨. Later on , Euripides wrote powerful tragedies about these events , in which details appealing characters and dramatic happenings , focusing the women who remain after the fall of Troy and regarding the king Agamenon .The motion picture revolves around the Trojan survivor women , one time army is vanquished and relies heavily on four declamatory monologues starred by four greatest and unquestionable actresses . Awesome Katharine Hepburn as Queen Hecuba , widow of Priamo , King of Troy ; their daughter the virginal-nutty Cassandra , a prophetess-princess , well played by Genevieve Bujold who arises emotion of the tale ; magnificent Vanessa Redgrave as Andromaca , Hector's wife , who carries the armor dressed by her deceased husband ; and extraordinary Irene Papas as Helen , continuously asking her pardon and innocence on the facts who caused the oldest story of love and war . Besides , minor performances by Brian Blessed as a Greek messenger and Patrick McGee as Menelaus . The sacked city was filmed in Spain on the Sierra of Atienza , Guadalajara with not many scenarios.The film belongs to a trilogy faithfully based on playwright Euripides , a fine rendering directed by Michael Cacoyannis , including the musician Mikis Theodorakis and starred by Irene Papas , the grandest Greek actress . As ¨Ifginea¨ concerning the sacrifice by Agamenon of his daughter Ifginea because the winds to sail to Troy refuse to blow ; as ¨Elektra¨ in which Clymnestra and her lover Aesgisthes kill her husband Agamenon after his return from Troy and confrontation between mother Clymnestra , her daughter Elektra and brother Orestes . Rating : Notable, well worth watching for the acting of the four female actresses.

It's hard to get excited about Greek tragedy. People in stylized masks and costumes wearing over-sized boots, declaiming verse in front of curtains and pillars . . . Bad Greek tragedy can be worse than bad Shakespeare. But Michael Cacoyannis ("Zorba the Greek") took Euripides out of the library and put him back in the real world in this raw, savage adaptation of perhaps the greatest anti-war play ever written. Euripides was the most popular poet of the ancient world, although his leftist ideology has made him a whipping boy for elitist critics from Aristotle to Nietzsche, who prefer the more patrician Aeschylus and Sophocles. "The Trojan Women" is a stirring indictment of imperialist aggression at a time when democratic Athens was involved in a protracted war with totalitarian Sparta (the inspiration for Plato's Republic). The good-guy Athenians were the aggressors, invading islands that didn't tow the line, exterminating the men, enslaving the women--and in the process alienating the Greek-speaking world and losing the war as the brutal Spartans came off as the good guys by comparison. The parallels with today's world situation need hardly be mentioned, but suffice it to say that when they're threatened democracies can be as brutal as dictatorships. Cacoyannis has fashioned a stark, uncompromising rendition of Euripides' play with a dream cast--Katharine Hepburn, Vanessa Redgrave, Genevieve Bujold (Clint Eastwood's love interest in "Tightrope") and Irene Papas. Brian Blessed ("I, Claudius," "The Black Adder") has the only significant male role. A movie well worth seeking out.

I enjoyed the two other films I have seen from this director, "Zorba the Greek" and his best foreign film nom. "Ipthgina". My complaint with those and with this is that they are too long. The play this is based on may be lacking in quailty to the others. Either way I would not recommend it.3/10

This is a remarkably ineffectual filming of Euripides' magnificent examination of the effects of war on women. Euripides embarrassed Athens with his realism and blatant theatricality, neither of which is on view here. The four-star cast intone their limes reverently, as if reading holy scripture, never becoming real women watching their city burn and awaiting slavery and rape. The staging is stiff and posey,farther distancing a viewer from emotional involvement. The translation is stiff and respectful. One might say that this great play is here respected to death. In short, the film shows astonishingly little invention or imagination. And how is it that all the women of Troy managed to dress in identical matching rags? This is the only film of this immortal play. Someone with feeling and passion, film it again, please.