“An unjustly neglected version of the Sophocles drama, adapted and directed by George Tzavellas so that the action is lucid and uncluttered, the characters are driven by instinct and passion, and the voices (speaking modern Greek) are eloquent. The commenting chorus (the bane of movie adaptations of classic Greek plays and, indeed, of many stage versions, too) has been reduced to a minimum, and the action moves from the formalized setting of the palace at Thebes to the natural landscape of hills and plains without sacrificing the formal power of the performances. It takes a little while to adjust to this mixture of stylization and the naturalistic approach, but then Tzavellas's approach takes hold. The young Irene Papas is the strong yet defenseless Antigone, daughter of Oedipus, who rebels against the kingly authority of her uncle Creon (the great Manos Katrakis); she breaks an unjust law - a law that violates her deepest feelings and her sense of justice and obligation - and is condemned to be buried alive. Papas and Katrakis give splendidly matched antagonistic performances, and there are such masterly sequences as Antigone stealing into the countryside to bury her dead brother, who has been left exposed in the sun, and such powerful images as the blind, decrepit Teiresias in the shocking daylight. The English subtitles, by Noelle Gillmor, are a demonstration that subtitling can be a branch of the fine craft of translation.”