ZORBA THE GREEK (1964)

THE FILM

FILM DIRECTOR: Michael Cacoyannis

SCREENWRITER: Michael Cacoyannis

FILM STARS: Anthony Quinn, Alan Bates, Irene Papas, Lila Kedrova, Giorgos Foundas, Sotiris Moustakas, Anna Kyriakou, Eleni Anousaki, Yorgo Voyagis, Takis Emmanuel, George P. Cosmatos, Nikos Papadakis

COUNTRY: Greece

THIS BOOK

AUTHOR: Nikos Kazantzakis (Translated by Carl Wildman)

TYPE: Novel

PUBLISHER: Faber

THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 1969

COUNTRY: Great Britain

COVER: Paperback

THE ORIGINAL BOOK

ORIGINAL AUTHOR: As Above

YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 1946

ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: The film title

NOTES

GENRE: Drama

WORDS:  I have seen the film, many times, as a kid and as a teen, and I have read the book, only once, many years ago.

Despite the Greek setting, being the son of (coastal) Croatian parents, I thought, there was something I could relate to in the film.

Here in Australia, as a mid-teen I embarked on a mad scramble for to reaffirm the ethnicity of my childhood and do away with the “trying to fit in” awkward years.

It was a job easier said than done. Apart from the emotional hurdles and occasional jeers I knew I would get Croatians in popular culture were thin on the ground, even if there was a sizeable minority here in Australia.

Sure, there are famous Croats, but try finding film and literature from the “new world” that has any mention of Croatians. Talk about being marginalised and invisible. Where are our TV shows, movies, books, magazines and acknowledgement?  Sure, some will say well, you are white European. Yes, but saying that southern Europeans from the Mediterranean are the same as Swedes or Norwegians is a whole different form of racism (perhaps). We are all white but some are whiter than others. Olive lives matter as well. Right? Okay, I get it, the Slovakians, Czechs, Lithuanians or inhabitants of any small nations (especially the Slavic ones) could say the same, but you know … where was our time in the sun? Well, the Croats certainly have more exposure now but as a kid in the 70s and 80s that wasn’t the case. I know it’s a small country and race – about four million of them and about two to three million left over the last century but that is comparable to the Irish, and they are well represented in popular culture. History and time and place have (had) conspired against the Croats I suspect. The race was always part of another empire – we have been called Italians, Austrians, Hungarians and Yugoslavs, and our achievements have been labelled Italian, Austrian, Hungarian or Yugoslav … at least in the English speaking world.

End of rant.

I still needed something to relate to, so I had to look to the Italians and Italian film (especially), and then I found Zorba the Greek. Why?

It’s all the Mediterranean, right?

And, what’s more, people had mistaken me for Italian and Greek before and I was always lumped in with them when it came to racist remarks, whether they be good natured, casual or otherwise.

Close enough was good enough I thought.

I love Anthony Quinn, and did as a kid, and some of that love was because of this film. He is perfect (and he’s not Greek either though he had played one in The Guns of Navarone (1961)  …  he went on to play more Greeks in The Magus (1968), A Dream of Kings (1969), The Greek Tycoon (1978), Only the Lonely (1991), Onassis: The Richest Man in the World (1988) and even Zeus in the TV series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys in the 1990s)). I went out and found the soundtrack in an op shop (a staple in op shops) and would play it incessantly as it had bits of dialogue from the film between the music. I then tracked down the Broadway musical of Zorba, with Quinn, and then finally this book.

The book, I recall, is a good read but it is one where the film overshadows it and you read the novel with pictures of Quinn, Bates and Papas in black and white in your head with the music of Mikis Theodorakis as background. The film you remember while the highly regarded novel fleshes out the characters. Sorry bibliophiles. The film is, perhaps, the greatest of Greek films … even if it’s not it’s the one I enjoy the most. The rest I can take or leave.

But what is it about?

Well, the blog is about how I relate to the book or the film (whilst throwing up some movie tie-in cover art) … but, the loud, lusty, drinking, profane Zorba who’s not hesitant on giving politically incorrect but astute practical advice on life and the human condition reminded me of more than one relative and old Croatian (maybe it is, after all, a Mediterranean thing). Zorba is the heart but he is not the central character, a young Greek intellectual (English in the film) is, and he wishes to escape his bookish life with the aid of the boisterous and mysterious Alexis Zorba. Adventures follow …

The film is dominated by Quinn as Zorba and it is his interpretation that probably reinforced stereotypes in my head (Zorba’s advice isn’t always the best and there is cruelty which is sometimes missed by lovers of the film, just as some lovers of La Dolce Vita (1960) miss the point there also – neither are are great advertisements for the cultures they portray (Greek village island life, Italian big city life respectively) when you think about it) but they made me happy at the time.

And, it made many other people happy … the film was a huge hit when released.

TRIVIA

• The famous traditional dance in the film, the Sirtaki, was created specifically for the film rather than a traditional form of dance. The dance is based on a traditional Cretan dance as well as two other Greek dances. It’s not the last time that a new dance was thought to be a traditional old one: the Irish Riverdance, traditional but not.
• The underrated film director George P. Cosmatos, the underrated film director of films inclosing Massacre in Rome (1973), Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985) and Tombstone (1993) has a small role as a young man.

LINKS

MUSIC

TRAILER