Michael Cacoyannis | Αλέξης Ζορμπάς (Zorba the Greek) / 1964

the catastrophe

by Douglas Messerli

 

Michael Cacoyannis (screenplay, based on the novel by Nikos Kazantzakis, and director) Αλέξης Ζορμπάς (Zorba the Greek) / 1964

 

Although I seem to recall seeing Zorba the Greek when it was originally released in 1964, since I was in Norway for most of the year I probably didn’t see it until I moved to Wisconsin in 1965. In any event, it was certainly a memorable film, and, even though I’ve seen it a couple of times since—including yesterday at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Bing Theater—I still recall my earliest viewing. Before I attended the film, Howard spoke of his memories, recalling it being a very romantic film.

     True, I assured him, there is something epic about the longish work, and certainly many Americans at the time of its first release found its Crete location as splendidly exotic (my husband Howard’s father and several his Pikesville-Baltimore friends soon sported Greek caps after the movie’s premiere); yet I reminded Howard that I surely couldn’t describe the work, in which the two major woman characters died in terrible circumstances and the Alan Bates figure (Basil) has huge financial losses, as truly “romantic.” I suppose, however, that a great many American viewers of time did perceive its grand themes of love and loss that way.

    And maybe if you boil down gay director Michael Cacoyannis’ story to its essence—boy meets boy, boys egg on each other to find a woman, women are destroyed, and boys go dancing on the beach—you might be able to see this work as a truly misogynistic romantic tale. But then I don’t think most audiences of the day would have seen it this way either. *

      Actually, I now realize, nothing about Zorba is precisely what it seems to be. Although the Nikos Kazantzakis-based tale seems very much to be about living life to the full despite all the dangers of doing just that, in reality this story and its central figure, Alexis Zorba (brilliantly embodied by the Mexican-born Anthony Quinn) represents a series of catastrophes. Indeed, early into the story, Zorba admits that not only was his marriage a catastrophe—

 

          Alexis Zorba: Am I not a man? And is a man not stupid? I'm

          a man, so I married. Wife, children, house, everything.

          The full catastrophe.

 

—but that everything he does results in near-disaster. Nonetheless, the naïve and shy Britisher Basil (who supposedly is half-Greek and has inherited a crumbling mine) still takes him on as a friend, advisor, and confidant. Except for Quinn’s big smile and broad melodramatic gestures, it’s hard to know why.

       From the moment they arrive in Crete, staying at the Hotel Ritz, a run-down claptrap of a place owned by an aging French woman, Madame Hortense, Zorba begins his pattern of womanizing that fascinates but also shocks the reasonable Britisher. Yes, he gives the consumptive old “cow” (as Zorba later describes her) a new reason to live, but his lies, his lust, and his generally absurd behavior certainly do not lie within the realm of reason which we are led to believe is what keeps the closeted and bookish Basil in check.

     Perhaps it is simply the fact that he has never met someone as outlandish as Zorba is what attracts him to the man. Quinn plays, at times, another version of Fellini’s near-idiot, volatile strongman in La Strada, a man who attempts in this film to single-handedly tear down the timbers of the aging mine before coming up with an idea of bringing the mountain forest down to the sea. Zorba is charming enough, particularly with a good jug of wine, to even convert the monks who own the forest, to embrace his dreams.

     He even convinces the supposedly educated Basil that he can build his quite apparently jerry-rigged system, and the now obviously stupid young man gives him money to head to the city to purchase supplies. Of course, “the catastrophe” immediately squanders away the money on a whore, hotel room, and hair re-do, admitting his very transgressions in a letter back to his “boss.” But even in Basil’s response, we see Zorba’s catastrophic behavior is spreading, particularly when Madame Hortense suddenly appears at Basil’s door in order to hear if he has reported any news addressed to her.

     Like Zorba, Basil lies: Zorba will return to marry Hortense. I should add that, although Lila Kedrova won an Academy Award for her endearing performance, half of her lines are still nearly impenetrable, as she speaks in a kind of Russian-inspired French/English (in her first English-language production) somewhat similar to the Belgian-French/English employed by Peter Sellers’ in his role as Chief Inspector Clouseau.

     Soon after, we realize that Zorba’s behavior has infected him even further, when he (finally) visits the beautiful Widow (Irene Papas), bedding her in a village of angry and horny men who—when the son of one of them drowns himself out of his love for the woman—are perfectly willing to interrupt the son’s funeral to perform an honor killing, stoning and finally slitting the Widow’s neck.

     The meek and civilized Basil is unable to take any action, but even Zorba’s sudden appearance out of nowhere to attempt to save her, has little effect. Nor can he save Hortense. He marries her in a kind of mock ceremony under the night skies with God and Basil as his witnesses; yet seemingly only hours later she lies in her bed dying of consumption, the old harpies of the village posting themselves like evil gnomes around her bed, ready to strip her room and hotel clean of nearly every object the moment of her death rattle. It is one of the most terrifying scenes in all of film history.

    I suppose that we might imagine that Zorba is still a kind-hearted hero when he retrieves the only thing remaining in bride’s room, a caged parrot. But one would think that after seeing the woman with whom he had a one-night stand murdered and Zorba’s bride (very much like the Bride of Frankenstein) stripped of her personal remnants—she will not even be buried, Zorba reports, since her Catholicism is different from that of the Greek island—Basil might question his now dear friend’s competency, if not his sanity.      

      Obviously, Zorba’s final grand gesture, the mountain constructions that might have possibly brought the forest down to the boats, can only end in a catastrophe as well; although this scene is comic rather than tragic, it ends with what he knows is the closure of his deep friendship with Basil, reading the lamb shanks like tea-leaves to reveal that the handsome young man obviously will soon be traveling off, leaving him to perform any further destructive acts all alone, presumably ending in his death.

      Basil’s request that Zorba teach him “how to dance” is clearly an invitation to a kind of deep bonding between the two men that is a truer marriage than either has had with their women friends, in response to which Zorba gushes, “You know boss, I have never felt about another man what I feel for you,” or something to that effect.

      But even here, ironically, Quinn as Zorba created quite a catastrophe when, on the very day before shooting the scene, he broke his foot. The notes at the LACMA showing by Jeremy Arnold say it all:

 

“When filming resumed after several days, the foot had been wrapped in tape which could be removed for the shots, but Quinn could not jump or hop around as the scene required.

     Cacoyannis was worried, but Quinn reassured him. “And I danced. I could not lift my foot and set it down—the pain was unendurable—but I found that I could drag it along without too much discomfort, so I invented a dance with an unusual sliding-dragging step. I held out my arms, in the traditional Greek dance and shuffled along the sands. Soon, Alan Bates picked up on the move, and the two of us were lifted by the music and the sea, taken arm in arm to a spiritual place, out of the ordinary and far away. We were born-again Greeks, joyously celebrating life. We had no idea what we were doing, but it felt right, and good.” Afterwards, Cacoyannis asked him what that dance was called. Quinn replied, “It’s a Sirtaki. It’s traditional. One of the villagers taught it to me.” He drew the name from thin air.”

 

     So even the great last scene was pure bravura, a lie bigger than those even told by the character Quinn played.

      But who could possibly dismiss such a brazenly beautiful false reality? And who could forget Mikis Theodorakis’ music or Walter Lassally’s memorable black-and-white cinematography, which also was awarded an Oscar in a year in which the big colorful musical My Fair Lady won most of the awards. Perhaps we simply must forgive Zorba and the film depicting him for such terribly catastrophic lies. After all, this movie is still something that once seen is unable to be forgotten. And its deep male-bonding clearly appealed to all those middle-class American males whom had never before been able to express it.

 

*

 

      I was amused recently (2023) to read a sort of purposely exaggerated commentary by the fiction writer John Wier about this film in which, while admittedly skipping over much of the necessary plot, he zeroed in on the gay insights which I only hint at. But they certainly give credence to what I attempted to convey in much more nuanced language.

      One of his first, and perhaps most exaggerated comments—also quite literally true was the question with which he begins his short essay: “Did 1964 audiences get that Zorba is about two tortured and torturing bisexual killers who conspire to get the local widow murdered, all the while taunting and teasing and abusing Lila Kedrova?”

      He continues is his taunting tone: “Michael Cacoyanis was nominated for Best Director, but Zorba has no tone, no point of view. It's got crisp black and white photography that does what it can to suggest a narrative approach, but the film wanders around, not in a fun way, and doesn't get to the point until the scene that's shown in YouTube clips, where Quinn and Bates dance on the beach to the famous "authentic Greek" bouzouki riff by Mikis Theodorakis.”

     Wier continues:

 

First, though…we have to kill two women: Irene Papas, the only member of the main cast who is in fact Greek; and Lila Kedrova. Papas plays The Widow (does she get a name?...) whom Quinn keeps urging Bates to, you know, get with; but Bates, who plays a Greek British guy on extended holiday in Crete, and who is dressed like a 14-year-old Eton schoolboy who is fagging (in the 17th century Etonic sense) for Quinn—Bates, whose acting choice is to keep his sweater clean—his want is to be tidy: Bates keeps saying, every time Quinn pushes him at Papas, ‘I would prefer not to,’ and who wouldn't read him as a closeted gay guy whose buddy is daring him to come out?

     Quinn goes off to the big city to get supplies for the lignite (brown coal) mine they're digging, and while he's gone, Bates sleeps with Papas (rather unbelievably, as Bates has shown no sexual urge that does not involve his doggy devotion to Quinn); and then the entire village gathers murderously outside Papas's house and stones her like Mary Magdalene, because the local boy who wanted her, and whom she spurned, has drowned himself while she was banging Bates-the-foreigner. . . .Why stone the woman? Bates is the culprit; he's the guy who seduces Papas while her tragic Tristan-ish wannabe lover gives himself to the sea; and yet it's Papas whom the village surrounds and stones and kills, her throat slit by a big dude with a dull knife.”

     And then poor Lila Kedrova dies horribly of cancer while Quinn holds her, and, okay, she gets an Oscar for it, but the movie mocks her, laughs at her desire, lets Quinn hold his nose while he makes love to her and calls her a slut and a whore, not in a fun way. The film treats her sexuality as grotesque-because-an-old-woman's, even though she was, in real life, three years younger than Quinn, who is treated as priapic and hot and whom we watch strip naked and dash into the ocean's waves, the camera gazing in admiration upon his 49-year-old receding naked manly buttocks. So whee.”

 

      Wier again invokes his fascination with the final scene. “Why did I watch? Because of the YouTube clip with the beach and the dudes and the dance and the bouzouki music. It happens in literally the film's last five minutes, at the 2-hour-18-minute mark. The boys have now lost everything: the women they tortured, the mine they dug; and with it all gone, Bates, who knows he's going back to England in a couple days, can finally ask his beloved Quinn to show him how to dance.

     Alan Bates is so handsome. That's why I kept watching. I'm empty inside, don't judge me. He was also, in real life, a tortured bisexual, who was reportedly as mute about his desires as he is libidinously muted in Zorba the Greek.

     But he wants to dance. They are on the shore. The ruins of their mine is uphill behind them. They've been digging a tunnel! Is that anal sex? Can I be stopped? They have eaten a lamb. Their fingers are greasy. Bates says he's leaving, and then he says, ‘Teach me to dance. Will you?’

    Suddenly, at last, the film comes into focus. Cut to Quinn rising up into the frame, all grey and grizzled, but still virile, and he strips off his coat and rolls up his sleeves and says, ‘Come on, my boy,’ snaps his fingers and circles Bates—his gay gaze! as he circles and considers Bates! And then the film cuts, in the middle of Quinn's circling, in a shot that stops time, to Quinn's face and shoulders centered in the frame, against the wide sea, and Walter Lassally's photography, campaigning for an Oscar, which it got, does its black-and-white best, as Quinn spreads his arms wide like Jesus getting up on the cross. The men are both wearing neckties, Quinn's is pulled slant, Bates's is tied tight, and Bates is all in white, the mother of God, his suit is slightly too big for him and hangs a bit, he's been emaciated by his desire for Quinn, “velleity”—desiring but not acting— has gnawed at his flesh, Quinn is pretending he's Greek, you can feel the impersonation but so what, it's the kind of film where you expect the hero to say stuff like, "Strong like bull," and he does!

      But what he says to Bates is, ‘I never loved a man more than you.’ And repressed gay men worldwide in 1964 ejaculate in their minds. Quinn calls him boss! ‘I have so much to tell you,’ he tells Bates. Quinn is coming out, but the film's over.”

 

*Oddly, the often somewhat cynical and certainly hard-nosed film reviewer Ira Joel Haber reveals the far more innocent and romantic reading of the film that my husband Howard and others had at the time of the film’s premier:

“I saw it when it opened in NYC in 64 at the Sutton theatre.  I was 17 and loved it. I was starting to see more exotic and adult films, and this was not only exotic and adult but wonderfully entertaining. I had never seen anything like it and it was a big critical and popular success. It was Quinn's last brave and exciting performance and his last Oscar nomination (I thought he was a shoo in) and I adored Lila Kedrova and Irene Papas who I don't think I had ever seen in a movie before.”

     Yes, this film was exotic and romantic in a way, apparently, I never quite understood.

 

Los Angeles, July 26, 2017, December 12, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review and My Queer Cinema blog (July 2017 and December 2023).