A Greek Tragedy (1985) User Reviews

THIS won the Academy Award?!

[planktonrules · 5/10 · 11 February 2008]

A Greek TRAGEDY is one of the more unusual winners of the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film--partly because it seemed so ordinary and partly because a ground-breaking film (LUXO, JR.) didn't. LUXO, JR. Is a very simple film by the standards of today, but it was one of the first short released by Pixar Films and opened up a Pandora's Box of CG animation. Because it was so important (and fun to watch), it is amazing that it was only nominated.

As for A Greek TRAGEDY, the story is told through more traditional hand-drawn animation. And as for the quality of this animation, it's okay, but not what you'd expect for an Oscar winner. I'd like to say that at least it had a good story, but frankly it was only okay as well. So I am left asking myself "why"--why did this ordinary film win? I wish I knew. Perhaps computer generated graphics were just too new to be considered by some to be animation.

An Oscar tragedy? Not that far off.

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 14 March 2016]

"A Greek tragedy" is a Belgian 6.5-minute animated short film that won writer and director Nicole Van Goethem an Academy Award 30 years ago. I wish I could say something more positive given her untimely death, but I am very much baffled by the film's success. The animation is not too bad for the 1980s and I have seen worse winning Oscars from that decade, but the story is really strange, uninspired and uninteresting. This makes me actually glad that Oscar-winning short films these days are very much superior in terms of the plot and this does not only apply to this film here, but to many Oscar winners from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s in the animated short film category. So yeah, back to this one: The story is entirely comedy, at least for the audience, but it is never funny. I don't think I smiled once. Not a good film and I cannot recommend it.

Harmless, but unremarkable

[Rectangular_businessman · 5/10 · 31 May 2023]

Along with The Crunch Bird, this is often considered one of the worst winners of the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film category.

Who knows what did the Academy saw here. Who knows why this was even nominated. (My favorite of the nominees from that year was The Frog, the Dog and the Devil, but I'm not crazy about that short either)

The plot is almost non-existent, the jokes are not particularly funny and the animation, without being terrible, isn't particularly great.

I guess it has a certain "pleasant" vibe. At least I enjoyed this more than Tango by Zbigniew Rybczynski.

Still, a shame Nicole Van Goethem wasn't able to finish her third short, Living Apart Together, prior to her demise in the year 2000.

Nothing Here

[Hitchcoc · 4/10 · 26 October 2021]

Apparently this won an Oscar. I am a relatively astute movie viewer but I saw nothing very clever or engaging in this film. It features three non-erotic females holding up a temple that is on its last legs. It is tiring task and they have all sorts of roadblocks.

this is a hold-up

[lee_eisenberg · 5/10 · 12 November 2021]

The Academy Award-winning animated short "Een griekse tragedie" ("A Greek Tragedy" in English) depicts some female figures holding up a dilapidated structure. The short has clever animation but the plot is nothing special. I guess that these animated shorts don't need to have the most complex plots or anything. Not a bad short, just no masterpiece. Maybe worth seeing once.

Good (but not great) animated short

[llltdesq · 8/10 · 28 November 2001]

This short won an Academy Award. Not having seen either of the other nominees, I can't say whether it should have, but it is a head-scratcher. The animation is good and it's an enjoyable short, but it isn't terribly special. It may well be suffering by comparison to the shorts that it accompanies on The World's Greatest Animation. The short is a good one, but it really isn't one of the greats. Still well worth seeing.