Word: cretan
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...disgust. Zorba the Greek was having its first showings. What the audiences took most unkindly to were scenes that portrayed the people of a small village in Crete uniting to support the knife slaying of a young widow outside church and the robbing of a harlot on her deathbed. "Cretans should do something. This is disgraceful," declared Athens' daily Estia. The Pan-Cretan Union in Athens declared the film monstrous and insulting...
Zorba the Greek resembles the Cretan landscape which it portrays so magnificently. Its themes are as ancient and clean-cut and harsh as the rocks. For this is a film about the struggle to live--to survive physically, to force nature to yield a living, and to continue to be glad you are alive. And it is about a community, its harsh and timeless rites, its reaction to outsiders...
...growing aware of it--when he encounters an intellectual young Englishman. Together they go to Crete. Or more accurately, Zorba invites himself with his usual impulsiveness and the Englishman accepts with an impulsiveness which is most unusual for him. Zorba meets an aging French courtesan, an outcast in the Cretan community, and makes her feel young again and watches her die. Meanwhile the Englishman meets a young widow, as beautiful and bitter as the ancient Greek heroines. He makes love to her. A young boy who loved her in vain drowns himself. And then the Englishman watches the community stone...
...cliches (witness the sadistic, perverted-looking SS officer), but most are acceptable. Gregory Peck, as usual, is better at looking rugged than anything else, but David Niven turns out an excellent performance as a college professor with a talent for blowing things up. And Anthony Quinn, as a Cretan guerilla, is in consistently top form. His bit in the interrogation scene should win over anyone not already convinced that he is among the finest actors in this country...
...natural anchorage for ancient mariners. Caskey was right. This summer, on Kea's St. Irene peninsula, he found a Mycenean settlement dating back 3,500 years, complete with temple, palace, private homes with inside plumbing, and a municipal sewer system. Scattered through the town were fragments of delicate Cretan pottery. The settlement was probably destroyed by an earthquake in 1400 B.C., but not before the imported arts and crafts of Cretan voyagers had influenced the more primitive local population. "What we call the miracle of Greek civilization," said Caskey, "did not come out of nothing...