Paul’s Pick: In her lifetime, Maria Callas was approached by many film directors to appear in any number of non-singing parts, but she turned down all the offers until Pier Paolo Pasolini proposed a film adaptation of the Greek tragedy Medea, with Callas playing the embittered older woman whose husband Jason leaves her for a foreign princess. In the play by Euripides, Medea cannot bring herself to kill Jason, but she gets her ultimate revenge by murdering not only the foreign princess, but also her two children by Jason…and guess what? She gets away with all these murders! Did Callas agree to make this movie because, in her mind, she was recasting Aristotle Onassis as the two-timing Jason, and Jackie Kennedy as the foreign princess? (1969, in Italian with English subtitles, 2 hours.)
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