Word: greekness
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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ZORBA THE GREEK. An uproarious Bacchanalian bash based on Nikos Kazantzakis' novel and superbly acted by Anthony Quinn as the wild old goat whose life is a series of total disasters...
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...
...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 the young woman he has loved, and kill...
...good deal of the credit for this must, of course, go to the actors. Anthony Quinn--well, sooner or later he had to play a grizzled Greek. He's always looked like Zorba the Greek should look. In this film, he is so hearty that all the dour faces in a waiting room break into responsive chuckles when he laughs; so tender that he can console the courtesan for the loss of her lovers, the English, French, Italian, and Russian generals; so defiant that after a mine he has attempted to open collapses, he shakes his fist at the obstinate...
...then, unfortunately, there's Alan Bates. Zorba the Greek is a superb film anyway. But anyone who has read the book would join me in adding the "anyway." For in the novel, the Englishman whom Bates portrays is a complex character, whom the reader respects as much as he loves Zorba. Zorba may embody life, but Zorba's boss hardly embodies lifelessness...