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Key words: Jules Dassin, Phaedra, Greek tragedy, Greek Mythology, classical tradition, cinema, classical tradition in cinema

Through a superb translation of Euripides’s Hippolytus to the world of 20th century Greek shipping magnates, Jules Dassin and Margarita Liberaki demonstrate in their 1962 film Phaedra the currency of the ancient myth owing to the universality of its themes and the timelessness of its message. Without straying substantially from Aristotle’s views on Greek tragedy expressed in his Poetics, in this paper we undertake a detailed analysis of a filmed tragedy in which the great error (megálē hamartía) of the chief protagonists, far from disassociating ancient Greece from modern times, confirms the convergence of both Greek cultures through displays of excess (hýbris), repeated premonitions, tragic irony, and instances of irrational behavior, guilt and tragic errors along with recognition (anagnṓrisis) accompanied