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.
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 somewhat misogynistically romantic. 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 he 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.
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 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.
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.
Basil’s request that Zorba teach him “how
to dance” is clearly an invitation for a kind of deep bonding between the two
men that is truer a marriage than either has had with their women friends, 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
dance. 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 stance, 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 replies, “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.
Los Angeles, July
26, 2017
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