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MASTER's THESIS M-1746 KALFOGLOU, Marios Stavros a CRITICAL ANALYSIS of the FILM ZORBA the GREEK. the American University, M.A

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MASTER's THESIS M-1746 KALFOGLOU, Marios Stavros a CRITICAL ANALYSIS of the FILM ZORBA the GREEK. the American University, M.A MASTER'S THESIS M-1746 KALFOGLOU, Marios Stavros A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE FILM ZORBA THE GREEK. The American University, M.A., 1968 Speech-Theater University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OP THE FILM ZORBA t h e GREEK oy Marios Stavros Kalfoglou Submitted to the Faculty of the Department of Communication of The American University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in Broadcasting Signatures o Chairman: Dean of the College Date IQGA AMERICAN UNIVERS!i Y ^ LIBRARY The American University rco , u iQfiQ Washington, D.C. r tlD J. 3 ia03 WASHINGTON. D. C. J^o3 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ............................................. iv INTRODUCTION ............................................... I I. ZORBA- THE BOOK AND THE A U T H O R ................... 4 A. Nikos Kazantzakis, the Author ........... 4 B . Zorba the Greek, the B o o k ................ 19 1-. The p l o t ...................... 19 2. The c h a r a c t e r s .................. 28 a. Mme Hortense and her affair with Zorba .... 28 b. The widow: temptress and v i c t i m .................. 35 c. Zaharias/joseph: the burning of the monastery........... 52 II. ZORBA - THE FILM AND ITS C R E A T O R ....................55 A. Michael Cacoyannis, Screenwriter, Director and..........P r oducer...................... 55 1........... Background..................... 55 2. Cacoyannis and Zorba, the germination of the f i l m ........... 65 B. Zorba the Greek, the F i l m ................72 1. Translation of book to film: po­ tentialities and limitations . 72 2............ S e t t i n g ...................... 80 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Ill CHAPTER PAGE 3 . Casting and elimination of c h a r a c t e r s .....................83 4. Sequence in novel and film .... 99 5 . Treatment of major episodes in novel and f i l m ................IO9 a. The Zorba-Hortense affair . 110 b. The Widow-Basil affair . 123 c. The mining operation .... I36 III. CRITICAL TREATMENT AND CONTROVERSY IN GREECE AND THE UNITED S T A T E S ...................l4l A. General Bases of Criticism ............... l4l B. Fidelity of Film to N o v e l ............. 142 C. The Issue of Barbarism: The Death Scenes of Mne Hortense and the W i d o w .......153 D.The Actors and Their Performances .... I60 IV. CONCLUSIONS..................................... l64 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................... I68 APPENDIX ............... .... ............................ .178 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. IV ACKNOWLEDGMENTS For the preparation of this Thesis I am indebted to many people. Many relatives and friends, both here and in Greece, collected valuable material and/or discussed the subject with me. Among them, I wish to mention specifically my father, Stavros Kalfoglou, who spent many hours in the National Library of Greece copying laboriously from books, magazines and newspapers; Miss Janet Lugo who helped me to crystallize and express my ideas; my wj.fe Gudrun, who typed and retyped the many drafts. I am most particularly grateful to Dr. Roger Penn, for all his assistance, guidance, advice and above all, patience, during the endless months of preparing this paper. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. INTRODUCTION March I965 was a turbulent month for the Greek cinema. The film Zorba the Greek was released in the movie theatres Ci Athens. Reaction was Im.mediate, diversified and controversial. Although premiered in Paris and the United States at approxi­ mately the same time, it was to generate the greatest furor of all in the country of its origin--Greeco. So charged was the atmosphere in Greece that shortly after its release a member of the Greek Parliament, infuriated by the film, asked the Minister of Justice: Whether according to articles 1, 2 and 14 of the Constitution he /the Minister/ would author­ ize the Public Prosecutor's office to prohibit the sliowing of the film, until some of the scenes and phrases in the movie which assailed the offi­ cial religion of the country could be removed.- Such was the reaction of many Greeks to the film. Controversy over the film did not diminish with the passage of time. Illustrative of the feeling of many was a reader's letter to one of the popular weekly magazines pub­ lished in the Greek capital. The reader, in the opening paragraph of his letter addressed to the Editor, said that See the text of the pertinent articles of the Greek Constitution then in effect. Appendix. (This Constitution was partly suspended by the Greek Government at the time of this study and a referendum is pending on the adoption of a new one.) Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 he took the liberty of writing since "It was a matter of public rather than private concern." Without naming the city where he lived as a "political refugee," he wrote that the film Zorba the Greek was released there, and "as a Greek first and a Cretan second I was Indignant, because of some 2 of the scenes in the film." Written almost two years after the release of the film, the letter indicates the staying power of the contro­ versy over Zorba the Greek. Sensitive Greeks, and especially sensitive Cretans, felt that the film adaptation of the novel produced a damaging image of the people of Crete and the Greek nation in general. ' If this criticism is valid, the condemnation of the man responsible—might be justified. There Is also room for the opinion that those who took offense to the film were over-sensitive and immaturely over-patriotic and that Zorba the Greek' s contribution to filmic art v/as significant and valuable. The purpose of this study Is to examine the trans­ formation to film of a novel written by the Greek author Nikos Kazantzakis under the title of The Life and Adventures 2 " ALaXoYOC II ^ toOc; ovayvOo'cq toü ' Taxuôp6|iou' ; 'Avoix^n 'S- -.LotoXi^ /Conversation with the readers: An open letter/ Tachydromos (December 24, 1966), p. 9 8 . Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. o o of Alexis Zorba.^ The story was adapted, produced and directed by the Greek moviemaker Michael Cacoyannis, and released under the title Zorba the Greek. The writer will al-so review the critical treatment of the novel and the film in Greece and the United States in order to compare and explain the various reactions in the two countries. Finally, this paper v;ill attempt to assess the validity of the controversy over the film Zorba the Greek; a controversy that was elevated even to the halls of the Greek Parliament and that continued for an unwonted period of almost two years. ^The English translation of the novel, like the film, appeared as Zorba the Greek. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER I ZORBA--THE BOOK AND THE AUTHOR A. Nikos Kazantzakis, the Author Nikos Kazantzakis' life span was seventy-four years. He was fifty-eight when he began to write The Life and Adventures of Alexis Zorba^, a book that represented a turning point in his literary career. His earlier works had been primarily philosophical and non-fictional. He turned in earnest to the novelist's craft only after his permanent self-exile from Greece, following World War II, in the belief that this was the only effective medium for the communication of his ideas to foreigners. Zorba was Kazantzakis' first attempt at the novelistic interpretation of the life and culture of his native land. It is not, however, a conventional novel, nor was it written as such. It contains at least as many elements of the biographical and autobiographical as it does of the purely fictional. It is based on an actual episode in the author's life--an unsuccessful attempt to operate a lignite mine in the Peloponnesus--and its two major characters, the Boss and ^This is the title of the original Greek version of the book translated into English as Zorba the Greek. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Zorba, are based on the personalities of two real people, 2 one of whom (the Boss) is the author himself. Kazantzakis described the book as a "requiem to a friend," and in his posthumously published, semi-fanciful memoir Report to Greco,^ describes Zorba as one of the people (together with Homer, Buddha,Nietzsche and Bergson) who was "embedded most deeply in my soul," adding that "if there had been any question in my lifetime of choosing a spiritual guide, surely I would have chosen Zorba.Since the novel, Zorba, is primarily A study of the relationship between these two men and the interplay of their personalities and their world-views, a brief biographical sketch of the author as an individual may serve as a helpful preliminary to the examination of the book. As to the other, Kazantzakis wrote: "Zorba was a real person. Everything described in that book is real. His name was George Zorbas, not Alexis. I have many letters from him. I might publish them some day. He was from Macedonia. His daughter is still alive, his grandchildren, and his son." Man. Yalourakis, XaÇavtçâHpc; ; Wta Mcpa otnv ’Av-cfim /Kazantzakis: One Day in Antibe_s7 (Alexandria; Egypt: Typographeion "Emporiou," 1964), p. 27. 3lbid., p. 26, ^Helen Kazantzakis, the author's widow, writes in the Introduction to Report to Greco that "the Report is a mixture of fact and fiction--a great deal of truth, a minimum of fancy ...
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