Word: crete
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...Greeks don't gripe in movie theaters. But last week in Athens packed houses were howling, hissing, booing and whistling in 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...
While even skillful cameramen cannot transform Bates's boringly vacant expressions, elsewhere the photography is superb. It captures the harshness of the landscape and the flowers which spring up at Easter time. And it focuses on the expressions of the people of Crete (thus listed in the credits...
...earthy, powerful Zorba is growing old--and 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...
...hell of it, as the film begins, the young man (Alan Bates) turns suddenly to the old man (Anthony Quinn) and says yes. "I have a lignite mine in Crete. We can work it together. May God be with us." Zorba lifts his glass. "God," he bellows sturdily, "and the Devil...
Speak of the Devil and he appears. First night in Crete, the old man turns into an old goat and goes snorting after a dilapidated soubrette of 60 (Lila Kedrova), who followed the British fleet to Crete in her flaming youth and made enough money to retire by entertaining admirals on the bridge. Next day the old man urges his young friend to hold similar converse with the village widow (Irene Papas). The young man is afraid to try. "It would only make trouble," he murmurs. "Trouble!" the old man hoots at him. "Life is trouble. Only dead...