The description of Daedalus’ labyrinth, built as prison without possibility of escape for the Minotaur, is one of Ovid’s most famous passages. Modern, and especially postmodern, theory has often regarded the labyrinth as an analogy to complex literary compositions, with Ariadne’s thread as a kind of reader’s guide through such textual mazes. (Scholars regard Daedalus as a creative analogy to Ovid himself.) Chapter 4 accordingly centers on literal and figurative screen labyrinths. Since around 1960, elusive nonlinear plots became prominent in cinematic narratives, especially in French New Wave cinema. One film is of primary importance in this regard. Last Year at Marienbad, directed by Alain Resnais from a script by novelist Alain Robbe-Grillet, is set in and around an intricate maze-like building, in which time and place seem to exert a hallucinatory effect on the film’s characters and, in equal measure, on its viewers. Fascinating labyrinths appear in various film genres as well. Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining features one literal and one figurative maze; the latter, a large and complex building that exerts a demonic will, is the more deadly one. The titular house of Harry Kümel’s cult favorite Malpertuis is even more hellish – literally so because of its connection with classical Underworld mythology. Briefer discussions of two stylish mysteries, Mario Bava’s The Girl Who Knew Too Much and Jean-Jacques Annaud’s The Name of the Rose, lead to a final section with appreciations of other screen labyrinths and Minotaurs.

Chapters 5–6 deal with some of the chief aspects of Ovidian and cinematic metamorphoses. Chapter 5 examines another crucial moment in screen history, when film pioneer Georges Méliès accidentally discovered how bodies and objects could be changed into something completely different on the screen. Ovid’s versions of the myths of the sculptor Pygmalion, whose ivory statue, later named Galatea, comes to life, and, conversely, the petrifying gaze of the Gorgon Medusa initiated two important developments in modern visual arts: the Pygmalion Effect and the Medusa Effect. Related to these are the Hephaestus and Daedalus Effects, in which statues acquire movement. This chapter connects elements from Ovid’s myths to a variety of related film forms and genres. Visible essences and underlying characteristics of bodily metamorphoses are as important for Ovid’s epic as they are for the cinema. The latter has extensively shown complex metamorphoses through editing and camera tricks since the days of silent films and in animated films. Now computer-generated images (CGI) add a whole new dimension of verisimilitude to what is physically impossible. A complex metamorphosis, from human to robot, occurs in Fritz Lang’s silent classic Metropolis, while the metamorphosis of a young ballerina in Black Swan may well be the most realistic change of the human body in the CGI era. The chapter closes with a brief homage to Eisenstein’s famous montage in Battleship Potemkin, in which three marble statues of lions become one animated lion.