Oedipus Rex on AllMovie

The Stratford (Ontario) Shakespeare Festival was but a few years old when the troupe's production of Oedipus Rex was transferred to the screen. Sophocles' classic tragedy about a king who discovers that he is truly his own worst enemy has been translated several times, never more eloquently than by William Butler Yeats, whose version is seen herein. Douglas Campbell heads the cast of Oedipus, who in trying to ascertain the murderer of his father, learns to his horror that he is the culprit--and worse still, his wife Jocasta (Eleanor Stuart) is his own mother. Director Tyrone Guthrie does a masterful job with the material: this is no mustry, remote, ancient theatrical piece but a full-blooded, three-dimensional, surprisingly contemporary character study. If the voice of the actor playing the Messenger sounds familiar, it should: Douglas Rain later provided the voice of HAL 9000 in Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.