"L'odissea" (1968) TV mini-series

User Rating:

8.7/10   

Directors:

Franco Rossi
Piero Schivazappa

Writers:

Giampiero Bona (writer)
Vittorio Bonicelli (writer)

Release Date:

24 March 1968 (Italy)

Genre:

Adventure | Drama | Fantasy

Plot Keywords:

TV Mini-Series | Ancient Greece

Cast

Bekim Fehmiu	...	Ulysses / Odysseus
Irene Papas	...	Penelope
Michèle Breton	...	Athena
Fausto Tozzi	...	Menelaus
Renaud Verley	...	Telemachus
Marina Berti	...	Arete
Samson Burke	...	Polyphemus
Roy Purcell	...	Alcinous
Stefanella Giovannini	...	Cassandra
Karl-Otto Alberty	...	Eurymachus
Maurizio Tocchi	...	Leocritus
Barbara Bach	...	Nausicaa (as Barbara Gregorini)
Vladimir Leib	...	Aeolus
Scilla Gabel	...	Helen
Duje Novakovic	...	Elpenor

Also Known As:

"Die Odyssee" (West Germany)
"L'odyssée" (France)
"Le avventure di Ulisse" (Italy) (theatrical title)
"Odissea" (Italy) (video title)
"The Adventures of Ulysses" (Europe: English title) (theatrical title)

Runtime:

Italy:109 min (theatrical version) | Italy:446 min (video version) | Italy:55 min (8 episodes) | Spain:91 min (theatrical version)

Country:

Italy | Yugoslavia | West Germany | France

Language:

Italian

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

USA:GP

Filming Locations:

Dino De Laurentiis Cinematografica Studios, Rome, Lazio, Italy

Company:

Dino de Laurentiis Cinematografica

Goofs:

Factual errors: When the bow of Ulysses is taken form the storage room it is clearly strung. Bows have to be stored unstrung or they lose their strength over time (and this one is said to have not been touched for 20 years). As a result the movie deviates from the epic in the essential part that in the epic the bow is useless to the suitors because they are unable to string it (either due to lack of strength or not knowing that a composite bow is strung backwards). The movie on the other hand shows the suitors (rather unconvincingly) unable to simply draw the bow.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Nessuno (1992)

It will never be better than this... but will it be seen again?

In all honesty, this series is as much a classic (as television goes) as the original poem is to the world's literature. Far from being crassly exploitative, it is a beautiful and respectful rendering of one of the western culture's defining texts.

I was moved by the plight of Odysseus and his followers; touched by the drama of the fall of Troy (which was felt but not seen); intrigued by the way the gods played with the fate of mortals. (It should be mentioned that the gods appearing here are not ridiculous CGI creatures flitting around on their ankle wings, or poorly-cast fashion models in bikinis. As in Homer's work, they act through mortal agents or, rarely, are represented by classical statuary).

It's a pity it's not available in DVD, especially given the vastly inferior and cheesy adaptations of the Odyssey that one can find in video stores.