Hercules, at Olympus, berates his father Zeus for not allowing him to leave the gods' abode to adventure on earth. Eventually Zeus sends Hercules, on a beam, to the land of men.
Une célèbre actrice grecque, Maya (Mélina Mercouri), après avoir passé de nombreuses années à l'étranger, rentre en Grèce pour y jouer Médée. Alors qu'elle prépare son rôle, elle devient fascinée par le cas d'une Américaine Brenda Collins (Ellen Burstyn) qui a assassiné ses trois enfants quelques années plus tôt à Glyfada pour se venger de son mari infidèle. Maya rend visite à Brenda à la prison de Korydallos. Un lien de plus en plus fort se tisse entre les deux femmes.
When the King Agamemnon is murdered by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover and relative Aegisthus, the daughter Electra decides to get even, with the help of her brother Orestes. He helps his cousin Pylades to steal into Clytemnestra's house, and despite the fact that she is his mother, stabs her to death, then Aegisthus, as well.
The king of Crete, Cadmos, has just murdered his wife in order to live with his scheming lover Ermione. For this deed, a prophetess curses him in the name of the gods, foretelling him that the man his infant daughter Antiope would one day fall in love with will eventually be his doom. Furious at the gods' judgement and unable to kill Antiope on the spot (lest the curse would fulfill itself immediately), megalomanic Cadmos renounces the gods and proclaims himself one. To this end, he and Ermione undergo a treatment with mystical vapors which render their bodies invulnerable (save for one critical spot on Ermione's chest uncautiously left covered).
Basé sur la pièce de Sophocle, Antigone, le film expose l'opposition entre l'obéissance au pouvoir et le droit à la divergence d'opinions. Créon et Antigone, archétypes et symboles de ces deux aspects, meurent et ressuscitent à de multiples reprises parcourant l'histoire et les pays dans un film au récit cyclique.
After a ship wreckage Hercules finds himself on an unknown coast. He is found by princess Virna which takes care of the wounded Hercules. After a nightly assault Virna disappeared. Hercules starts to search her and finally finds her in Atlantis where Virna had been selected to become the new heires after the current Queen Ming. Hercules gets captured by Ming's amazon guard.
Malpertuis is the name of an old, rambling mansion which is in reality a labyrinth where characters from Greek mythology are imprisoned by the bedridden Cassavius (Welles). He manages to keep them (as well as his nephew and niece) prisoners even after his death, through a binding testament. As Jan, the nephew, (Carrière) unravels the mystery, he discovers that he cannot escape the house because Malpertuis is far more significant than he was led to believe.
The Trojan Women was one of a trilogy of plays dealing with the suffering created by the Trojan Wars. Hecuba (Katharine Hepburn), Queen of the Trojans and mother of Hector, one of Troy's most fearsome warriors, looks upon the remains of her kingdom; Andromache (Vanessa Redgrave), widow of the slain Hector and mother of his son Astyanax, must raise her son in the war's aftermath; Cassandra (Geneviève Bujold), Hecuba's daughter who has been driven insane by the ravages of war, waits to see if King Agamemnon will drive her into concubinage; Helen of Troy (Irene Papas), waits to see if she will live. But the most awful truth is unknown to them until Talthybius (Brian Blessed), the messenger of the Greek king, comes to the ruined city and tells them that King Agamemnon and his brother Menelaus have decreed that Hector's son Astyanax must die — the last of the male royalty of Troy must be executed to ensure the extinction of the line.
Approximately 2,500 years ago, the Athenian tragedians -- Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides -- said it all in the most eloquent and poetic terms. Everyone else has followed in their footsteps, from Goethe and Shakespeare to Mann and Beckett. More than ever, the ancient tragedies are relevant today, for their subject matter is the universal nature of man: his hunger for domination, his greed and his lust. The plays are the confirmation of the human tragedy for all times and all places. The Greek myths upon which these tragedies are based combine marvelous storytelling with symbolic associations that are the foundations of the collective unconscious of our modern world.
Hélène, reine de Sparte, s'ennuie, son mari Ménélas lui montrant peu d'intérêt. Elle s'enfuit à Troie avec Pâris. Ménélas déclare alors la guerre à Troie. Après la victoire, Hélène revient à Sparte. La coutume voudrait que son mari la tue lui-même, mais son charme opère et il la laisse en vie. Toutefois il ne s'occupe pas plus d'elle qu'auparavant et Hélène flirte avec le prince d'Ithaque.
Queen Capys is doomed to a life of slavery by the Powers of Darkness until the last descendant of Ulysses is put to death to please the Cyclops. This is almost accomplished in a raid on a village by the Queen's soldiers where a descendant of Ulysses is killed and his wife enslaved; however, their infant son is taken away to be protected by Maciste.
A successful Greek filmmaker A (Harvey Keitel) is returning home and sets out on an epic journey across the battered Balkans in search of three lost reels of film by the Manaki brothers, the pioneering photographers who introduced movies into the Balkans at the beginning of the century.