Patrick Comerford
I was back in Crete earlier this year, staying in Rethymnon, an old Venetian town on the north coast that for years is as close as I get to being at home in Greece.
There was time for walks on the beach and by the sea, long lingering meals with friends, visits to galleries and exhibitions, trips into the mountains, time for prayer in churches and monasteries, and time to listen to some old but favourite stories.
The best-known storyteller in modern Crete was Nikos Kazantzakis, author of the book that gave birth to Zorba the Greek, perhaps the best-loved Greek films. The book was first published in Greek in 1946 as Life and Times of Alexis Zorbas (Βίος και Πολιτεία του Αλέξη Ζορμπά).
The Oscar-winning film was produced in 1964 and this month marks the sixtieth anniversary of the release of the joint British-Greek production in Greece on 14 December 1964 and in New York on 17 December 1964. It was one of my earliest introductions to Greek culture, music and literature.
Zorba the Greek was directed by the Cypriot-born Michael Cacoyannis and the cast includes Anthony Quinn as Zorba, Alan Bates, Irene Papas and Lila Kedrova.
The film was shot in black and white on location in Crete, including Chania, the village of Kokkino Chorio in the Apokoronas region and Stavros Beach in the Akrotiri peninsula. The scene in which Quinn's character dances the Sirtaki was filmed on the beach at Stavros.
Six decades later, most people today know syrtáki as a typical Greek folkdance. But on one of my many visits to Crete in recent years, as I was crossing the mountains to visit the Monastery of Preveli and some remote beaches on the south coast, I was told that syrtáki was invented by Anthony Quinn as the dance scene was being filmed on a beach near Chania. And, while Zorba has become a stereotype of hardy Cretan men, Anthony Quinn had no Greek family connections but was from a mixed Irish and Mexican background.
Those two old myths have been shattered, but I return time and again to reading the original novel by Kazantzakis.
Basil (Alan Bates) is a half-English, half-Greek writer raised in England who returns to his father’s village in Crete to inherit some land and to restart an old mine. On the way, he meets Zorba, a gruff but boisterous peasant and musician.
When they arrive in Crete, they stay with Madame Hortense (Lila Kedrova), a French war widow, in her self-styled Hotel Ritz. Zorba wants to log trees in the local forest to fuel the mine, but the land is owned by a nearby monastery. He visits the monks and gets them drunk. Later, on the beach, he begins to dance in a way that mesmerises Basil. Meanwhile, they also get to know a young widow (Irene Papas).
Basil sends Zorba to buy cables and supplies in Chania – in the book the town is Iraklion or Candia, where Kazantzakis was born and is buried. There, Zorba squanders the money on drink and women. When he returns, he rows with Basil and a local man who overhears the content of their conversation drowns himself in the sea. At the funeral, the villagers blame the young widow for his death, and despite the best efforts of Basil and Zorba, she is murdered by the young man’s father.
When Madame Hortense contracts pneumonia, word spreads that ‘the foreigner’ is dying. The poor villagers crowd around her hotel, planning to steal her few possessions, and when she dies the house is ransacked and stripped bare. But she is refused a funeral because of her religion: ‘There will be no funeral. She was a Frank, she crossed herself with four fingers. The priest will not bury her like everybody else.’
Zorba eventually builds his machine to take timber down the hill and it is blessed by the priests. But all his efforts to make it work turn to disaster and everything is wrecked.
The film ends with the spine-tingling ‘teach me to dance’ sequence, the two men alone together on the beach, realising that although life’s dance can be learned along many different paths, sometimes the destination is the same, no matter what route is chosen. And they dance syrtaki together on the beach.
Zorba the Greek was filmed on location in Crete, mainly in Chania and the surrounding area. The score, written by the Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis who was buried in Chania in 2021, has remained popular ever since.
The film was made on a tight budget of $783,000, but grossed up to $23.5 million worldwide, making it a commercial success and one of the top earning films of 1964. It won three Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actress (Lila Kedrova), Best Art Direction, Black-and-White (Vassilis Photopoulos) and Best Cinematography, Black-and-White (Walter Lassally).
On one of those trips across the mountains from Rethymnon to Preveli on the south coast, I was told the story of syrtaki (συρτάκι), the dance Giorgos Provias choreographed for the film. Many think it is the archetypal Greek folkdance, and it is danced in countless restaurants, tavernas and resorts during the holiday season. But it is not a traditional Greek folkdance, and instead is a mixture of the slow and fast versions of a dance known as hasapiko.
The music was composed by Milis Theodorakis, but the movements were contrived on location by Anthony Quinn. Superstitious actors wish each other well on stage with the greeting, ‘Break a leg.’ Quinn had actually broken a bone in his foot on location, yet remained determined to continue filming. He improvised unexpectedly by mixing the slow and fast versions of hasapiko.
When he was asked by the production team what he was dancing, he replied: ‘Syrtáki’. His reply played on a Greek word for dragging, for Quinn should have been hopping when he was dragging his leg. No-one imagined that two generations later, syrtáki would be a popular Greek dance.
Syrtáki is danced in a line or circle, with dancers holding their hands on the neighbours’ shoulders. The dance begins with slower, smoother actions, gradually transforming into faster, vivid ones, often including hops and leaps. The Guinness World Record was set in 2012 by 5,614 people dancing syrtáki for five minutes in Volos.
As for Anthony Quinn (1915-2001), he was born Antonio Rodolfo Quinn Oaxaca in Chihuahua, Mexico, and denied being the son of an ‘Irish adventurer.’ He said his mother Nellie had Aztec ancestors, while his father, Frank Quinn, was the Mexican-born son of an Irish immigrant and once rode with Pancho Villa.
A year after Zorba was released, at the height of the film’s success, Anthony Quinn divorced his wife Katherine Lester DeMille in 1965. They had been married in All Saints’ Episcopal Church, Beverly Hills, in 1937, and they were the parents of five children. But that marriage provides a link with Stony Stratford.
Katherine Lester DeMille was born Katherine Paula Lester in Vancouver on 29 June 1911. She played 25 credited film roles from the mid-1930s to the late 1940s. She was considered Hollywood royalty and was noted for her dark beauty. Her father Edward Gabriel Lester (1887-1917), was a son of the Revd John Moore Lester (1851-1884), Vicar of Stony Stratford in 1880-1884, and of Amy (Hunt) Lester (1850-1895), who is commemorated in a window in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford. Katherine Lester DeMille died in Tucson, Arizona, in 1995.
The adventurous Zorba is the antithesis of the bookish Basil. Zorba is a potential symbol of freedom in Basil’s quest to find freedom. In Zorba’s view, only people who want to be free are truly human.
In many ways, the conflicts that unfold in the book provide a way for Kazantzakis to work through his own inner conflicts. At one time he had rejected Christianity and sought fulfilment in Buddhism and other philosophies. But he returned to Christianity and later wrote powerful novels about the sufferings of persecuted Christians in Asia Minor and about the life of Saint Francis of Assisi.
For Zorba, the journey is more important than the destination. He claims to be an atheist, yet realises that Christianity is central to the villagers’ way of life. He tells Basil: ‘The highest point a man can attain is … Sacred Awe!’
As Basil sets out for Crete, he wants to rid himself of the Buddha and abstract thinking. He finishes writing a book or paper on Buddha only to realise that he has exorcised the Buddha within. Kazantzakis eventually abandoned his own experiments with Buddhism, and despite strong criticism of his writings, he received an Orthodox funeral in Crete, where was buried on the bastion above Iraklion, looking out to the sea. The simple epitaph on his grave reads: Δεν ελπίζω τίποτα, δεν φοβούμαι τίποτα, είμαι ελεύθερος, ‘I hope for nothing, I fear for nothing, I am free.’
Kazantzakis prefaces his autobiographical novel Report to Greco with a prayer: ‘Three kinds of souls, three kinds of prayers: 1, I am a bow in your hands, Lord, draw me lest I rot. 2, Do not overdraw me, Lord, I shall break. 3, Overdraw me, Lord, and who cares if I break!’
