Christopher Nolan’s version of The Odyssey is far from the first committed to screen. As early as 1911, Italian director Guiseppe de Liguoro made a silent version entitled L’Odissea. Readers of a certain age may remember watching the futuristic animated series Ulysses 31 throughout the 1980s. O Brother, Where Art Thou? is based on The Odyssey. So too, if you squint as hard as you can and discount the Goofy Goober song, is the first SpongeBob SquarePants movie.
However, the pre-Nolan adaptation that has the biggest legacy is arguably Andrei Konchalovsky’s two-part version, made in 1997 for the Hallmark Channel. This is the adaptation that has been doing the rounds in recent days, clipped up on social media (the full version is highly discoverable on YouTube) and catching the eye of Joyce Carol Oates, who spent much of Thursday night tweeting very enthusiastically about it.
