Reception of classical mythology in Woody Allen's dramas: 'Crimes and Misdemeanors,' 'Match Point,' and 'Cassandra's Dream'

The thesis explores the reception of classical mythology in three dramas by Woody Allen: Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), Match Point (2005), and Cassandra’s Dream (2007). These films are studied as contemporary interpretations of the ancient stories of Oedipus, Narcissus, and Orestes. Allen’s films use mythic patterns to meditate on such ancient themes as illusion versus reality, status, alienation and self-identity, the tragedy of love, human conscience, moral choice and responsibility, fate and revenge, crime and punishment. The purpose of this study is to show how Woody Allen’s dramas originate from ancient mythology and how the study of Greek tragedy and Roman poetry sheds light on the problems centered in his movies, which are neglected by most critics. The comparative study of Allen’s dramas in the context of classical mythology is based on a dialogic relation between ancient and modern narratives proposed by Vladimir Bibler. In this dialogue, every work of art contributes to the deeper understanding of one another. The interpretation of film and text in this thesis is based on close reading analysis. The study of Crimes and Misdemeanors in the context of Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex discovers the film as an intertext and a metatext concerned with art’s capacities for representation of reality. The study of Match Point in the context of Ovid’s Narcissus reveals the problem of self-identification as a significant dimension of both narratives. A comparative analysis of Cassandra’s Dream and Aeschylus’s The Oresteia results in the insight about the film’s title and main conflict. Eventually, the study provides an example of a dialogic approach to comparative literature in practice.