October 20, 2015 (XXXI:8) Costa-Gavras, MISSING (1982, 122 min)

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Missing (1982, 122 minutes)

Oscar—1983—Best Writing, Based on Material from Another Medium (Costa-Gavras & Donald Stewart)

Directed by Costa-Gavras Written by Costa-Gavras and Donald Stewart (screenplay) and John Nichols (uncredited), based on the book Missing by . Produced by Edward Lewis, Mildred Lewis, Peter Guber, Jon Peters (uncredited) Music by Vangelis Cinematography by Ricardo Aronovich Film Editing by Françoise Bonnot

Jack Lemmon…Ed Horman …Beth Horman Melanie Mayron…Terry Simon Costa-Gavras (director, writer) (b. on February 12, 1933 in … Loutra-Iraias, as Konstantinos Gavras) won an Academy Charles Cioffi…Captain Ray Tower Award in 1983 for Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material David Clennon…Consul Phil Putnam from Another Medium for Missing (1982), which he shared with Richard Venture…U.S. Ambassador Donald Stewart. Costa-Gavras was not present at the awards Jerry Hardin…Colonel Sean Patrick ceremony. He was nominated twice in 1970 for Best Director for Richard Bradford…Andrew Babcock his film Z (1969), as well as Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Joe Regalbuto… Material from Another Medium Z (1969) which he shared with: Keith Szarabajka…David Holloway Jorge Semprún. He was also nominated for a 1983 Golden Globe John Doolittle…Dave McGeary for both Best Director and Best Screenplay (shared with Donald Janice Rule…Kate Newman Steward) for Missing (1982). He has both directed and written for Ward Costello…Congressman several films and TV series including Capital (2012), Hansford Rowe…Senator (2009), The Ax (2005), Amen. (2002), The Little Apocalypse Tina Romero…Maria (1993), Family Council (1986), Hanna K. (1983), Missing (1982), Richard Whiting…Statesman Womanlight (1979), Special Section (1975), (1972), Martin LaSalle… Z (1969), Shock Troops (1967), Compartiment tueurs (1965), Les Terence Nelson…Colonel Clay rates (1958, Short). He directed Mad City (1997), Lumière and Robert Hitt…Peter Chernin Company (1995, Documentary), À propos de Nice, la suite (1995, Félix González…Rojas segment "Les Kankobals"), Lest We Forget (1991, segment "Pour M.E. Rios…Mrs. Duran Kim Song-man, Corée"), Music Box (1989), Betrayed (1988), Yves Jorge Russek…Espinoza Montand (1970, TV Movie documentary), The Confession (1970) Edna Necoechea…Pia and wrote 1976 Mr. Klein (uncredited). Alan Penrith…Samuel Cross Costa-Gavras—MISSING-—2

Vangelis (music) (b. Evangelos Odysseus Papathanassiou March Oscars, one for Best in a Leading Role in 1974 for Save the 29, 1943 in Volos, Greece) won the 1982 Oscar for Best Music, Tiger (1973) and in 1956 for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for Original Score for Chariots of Fire (1981). Vangelis was not Mister Roberts (1955). He acted in over 96 films and television present at the awards ceremony. Co-presenter William Hurt series including, Serendipity (2001), The Legend of Bagger Vance accepted the award on his behalf. He was also nominated for two (2000), Tuesdays with Morrie (1999, TV Movie), The Odd Couple Golden Globes for Best Original Score in 1993 for 1492: Conquest II (1998), The Long Way Home (1998, TV Movie), 12 Angry Men of Paradise (1992) and in 1983 for Blade Runner (1982). He has (1997, TV Movie), Hamlet (1996), Grumpier Old Men (1995), The composed for over 56 films and television shows, some of which Grass Harp (1995), Short Cuts (1993), Glengarry Glen Ross include, Twilight of Shadows (2014), Trashed (2012, (1992), JFK (1991), Long Day's Journey Into Night (1987, TV Documentary),El Greco (2007, music composed and performed Movie), Mass Appeal (1984), Missing (1982), Buddy Buddy by), Alexander (2004), 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992), Bitter (1981), Tribute (1980), The China Syndrome (1979), Airport '77 Moon (1992), De Nuremberg à Nuremberg (1989, Documentary), (1977), The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1975), The Front Page The Bounty (1984), Antarctica (1984), Blade Runner (1982), (1974), Save the Tiger (1973), Avanti! (1972), Kotch (1971), The Missing (1982),Pablo Picasso Painter (1981, Documentary), Out of Towners (1970), The Odd Couple (1968), Luv (1967), The Chariots of Fire (1981), Death of a Princess (1980, TV Movie), Fortune Cookie (1966), The Great Race (1965), How to Murder Crime and Passion (1976), Le cantique des créatures: Georges Your Wife (1965), Irma la Douce (1963), Days of Wine and Roses Braque ou Le temps différent (1975, Documentary), Love (1974), (1962), Pepe (1960), The Apartment (1960), Some Like It Hot Sex-Power (1970), To prosopo tis Medousas (1967), Five (1959), Bell Book and Candle (1958), Cowboy (1958), Fire Down Thousand Lies (1966), My Brother, the Traffic Policeman (1963). Below (1957), My Sister Eileen (1955), Mister Roberts (1955), It Should Happen to You (1954), The Web (1951, TV Series), Ricardo Aronovich (cinematographer) (b. January 4, 1930 in Pulitzer Prize Playhouse (1951, TV Series), The Ford Buenos Aires, Argentina) won the Career Award at the 2001 Hour (1950, TV Series), Suspense (1949, TV Series), The Philco- Argentinean Film Critics Association Awards. He also won the Goodyear Television Playhouse (1949, TV Series).

Sissy Spacek…Beth Horman (b. Mary Elizabeth Spacek on December 25, 1949 in Quitman, ) has been nominated for six Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role including in 2002 for In the Bedroom (2001), in 1987 for Crimes of the Heart (1986), in 1985 for The River (1984), in 1983 for Missing (1982), and in 1977 for Carrie (1976). She won one Oscar in 1981 for Best Actress in a Leading Role for Coal Miner's Daughter (1980). She was nominated for three Golden Globes: for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama, in 1985 for The River (1984), in 1983 for Missing (1982), and in 1982 for Raggedy Man (1981). She has won three Golden Globes: in 2002 for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama for In the Bedroom (2001), in 1987 for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Comedy/Musical for Crimes of the Heart (1986) and in 1981 for Best Motion Picture Actress - Musical/Comedy for Coal 1965 Candango Trophy for Best Cinematography for Vereda de Miner's Daughter (1980). She was also nominated for three Salvação (1965) at the Brazilia Festival of Brazilian Cinema. He Primetime in 2010 for Outstanding Guest Actress has been nominated for two César Awards for Best in a Drama Series for Big Love (2006-2010) for playing "Marilyn Cinematography in 1984 for Le bal (1983) and in 1978 for Densham" in the episode "End of Days”, in 2002 for Outstanding Providence (1977). He has been the cinematographer in 90 films Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie for Last Call (2002) and television shows including, Blind Revenge (2009), Moscow for her role as "Zelda Fitzgerald", and in 1995 for Outstanding Zero (2006), Klimt (2006), Stranded (2001), Marcel Proust's Time Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or a Special Regained (1999), The Raft of the Medusa (1998), The Impostor The Good Old Boys (1995) for her role as "Spring Renfro". She (1997), The Family (1987), Le Bal (1983), Hanna K. (1983), has been in 60 films and television shows including, Bloodline Missing (1982), Chanel Solitaire (1981), The Outsider (1980), (2015-2016, TV Series), Deadfall (2012), The Help (2011), Big Lumiere (1976), The Assassination (1972), Murmur of the Heart Love (2010, TV Series), Gray Matters (2006), North Country (1971), São Paulo, Sociedade, Anônima (1965), Psique y sexo (2005), A Home at the End of the World (2004), Tuck Everlasting (1965), The Guns (1964), The Venerable Ones (1963), The Old (2002), In the Bedroom (2001), Affliction (1997), The Grass Harp Young People (1962), The Big Business (1959). (1995), JFK (1991), Crimes of the Heart (1986), The River (1984), Missing (1982), Raggedy Man (1981), Coal Miner's Daughter …Ed Horman (b. February 8, 1925 in Newton, (1980), 3 Women (1977), Welcome to L.A. (1976), Carrie (1976), Massachusetts—d. June 27, 2001, age 76, in , Badlands (1973), The Waltons (1973, TV Series), The Girls of California) was nominated for six Oscars for Best Actor in a Huntington House (1973, TV Movie), Love, American Style (1973, Leading Role including in 1983 for Missing (1982), in 1981 for TV Series), Prime Cut (1972). Tribute (1980), in 1980 for The China Syndrome (1979) in 1963 for Days of Wine and Roses (1962), in 1961 for The Apartment Melanie Mayron…Terry Simon (b. October 20, 1952 in (1960) and in 1960 for Some Like It Hot (1959). He won two Philadelphia, PA) was nominated twice in 1990 and 1991, and won Costa-Gavras—MISSING-—3 once at the 1989 Primetime Emmy awards for Outstanding Atlantis (1977, TV Series), Barnaby Jones (1977, TV Series), Supporting Actress in a Drama Series for her portrayal of "Melissa Eight Is Enough (1977, TV Series). Steadman" on (1987). She has acted in 48 films and television shows including Breaking the Girls (2012), Lipstick Charles Cioffi…Captain Ray Tower (b. October 31, 1935 in Jungle (2008, TV Series), Clockstoppers (2002), East of A (2000), , New York) has acted in over 95 films and (1997, TV Series), Lois & Clark: The New television shows, some of which include Detective (2005, TV Adventures of Superman (1994, TV Series), My Blue Heaven Movie), 1999-2002 The Practice (1999-2002, TV Series), Frasier (1990), Checking Out (1989), Wallenberg: A Hero's Story (1985, (2001), Amy's Orgasm (2001), Columbo (2000, TV Series), TV Movie), Cagney & Lacey (1985, TV Series), Missing (1982), Chicago Hope (1995-2000), The Larry Sanders Show (1995-1998), Heartbeeps (1982), Katie: Portrait of a Centerfold (1978, TV The -Files (1993-1997), Cybill (1996, TV Series), Lois & Clark: Movie), Girlfriends (1978), (1977, TV Series), Car The New Adventures of Superman (1996), Murder, She Wrote Wash (1976), Gable and Lombard (1976), Hustling (1975, TV (1995), NYPD Blue (1995), L.A. Law (1992), Law & Order (1991), Movie), The Gambler (1974), Harry and Tonto (1974). She has Days of Our Lives (1990), Mancuso, FBI (1990, TV Series), also directed 44 films and television shows, some of which Kojak: Fatal Flaw (1989, TV Movie), Peter Gunn (1989), Matlock include, (2015, TV Series, 1 episode), The Fosters (1989), Thirtysomething (1989, TV Series), The Equalizer (1986- (2013-2015, TV Series, 3 episodes), Switched at Birth (2013-2015, 1987, TV Series), Simon & Simon (1982-1986, TV Series), St. TV Series, 6 episodes) Playdate (2013), Little Women, Big Cars Elsewhere (1986), All the Right Moves (1983), The A-Team (1983, (2012), Lipstick Jungle (2008, TV Series, 1 episode), Zeyda and TV Series), Taxi (1982, TV Series), Lou Grant (1982, TV Series), the Hitman (2004), Arli$$ (1998-2002, TV Series, 7 episodes), Missing (1982), McClain's Law (1981, TV Series), Flamingo Road Dawson's Creek (1999, TV Series, 2 episodes), The Larry Sanders (1981, TV Series), Time After Time (1979), Little House on the Show (1998, TV Series, 1 episode), Tribeca (1993, TV Series, 1 Prairie (1979), The Bionic Woman (1978), Gray Lady Down episode), Sirens (1993, TV Series), Thirtysomething (1990, TV (1978), The Six Million Dollar Man (1978, TV Series), Wonder Series, 2 episodes). Woman (1977, TV Series), Kojak (1977, TV Series), Tail Gunner Joe (1977, TV Movie), The Streets of San Francisco (1975, TV Series), Cannon (1971-1975, TV Series), Crazy Joe (1974), The Don Is Dead (1973), Lucky Luciano (1973), Bonanza (1972, TV Series), Shaft (1971), Klute (1971), Another World (1964, TV Series).

Joyce and Charles Horman

Salvador Guillermo Allende Gossens (26 June 1908 – 11 John Shea…Charles Horman (b. April 14, 1949 in North September 1973) was a Chilean physician and politician, known as Conway, New Hampshire) won one Primetime Emmy Award in the first Marxist to become president of a Latin American country 1988 for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or through open elections. a Special Allende's involvement in Chilean political life spanned a for Baby M (1988) for playing "Bill Stern". He has acted in over 80 period of nearly forty years. As a member of the Socialist Party, he films and television shows, some of which are Grey Lady (2015, was a senator, deputy and cabinet minister. He unsuccessfully ran completed), Northern Borders (2013), (2012-2013, for the presidency in the 1952, 1958, and 1964 elections. In 1970, TV Series), (2010), Framed (2008), Heartbreak he won the presidency in a close three-way race. He was elected in Hospital (2002), Catalina Trust (1999), Sex and the City (1999, a run-off by Congress as no candidate had gained a majority. TV Series), The Adventures of Sebastian Cole (1998), Getting As president, Allende adopted a policy of nationalisation Personal (1998), Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman of industries and collectivisation; due to these and other factors, (1993-1997, TV Series), A Weekend in the Country (1996, TV increasingly strained relations between him and the legislative and Movie), See Jane Run (1995, TV Movie), Tales from the Crypt judicial branches of the Chilean government – who did not share (1993, TV Series), Honey I Blew Up the Kid (1992), Freejack his enthusiasm for socialisation – culminated in a declaration of a (1992), Stealing Home (1998), Hitler's S.S.: Portrait in Evil (1985, "constitutional breakdown" by the congress. A centre-right TV Movie), (1983, TV Mini-Series), Missing (1982), majority including the Christian Democrats, whose support had Family Reunion (1981, TV Movie), Hussy (1980), Man from enabled Allende's election, denounced his rule as unconstitutional and called for his overthrow by force. On 11 September 1973 the Costa-Gavras—MISSING-—4 military moved to oust Allende in a coup d'état sponsored by the interested him, as did Jean Renoir, Alan Resnais, and Jean-Luc Central Intelligence Agency. As troops surrounded Godard among the French La Moneda Palace, he gave his last speech vowing not to resign. After two years at the Sorbonne, Costa-Gavras switched Later that day, Allende shot himself to death with an AK-47 rifle to IDHEC, the French film school, where he studied production according to an 2011 investigation conducted by a Chilean court and directing. In 1956 he became a French citizen. On completing with the assistence of international experts. his studies in 1958 he began to write scripts for American and Following Allende's deposition, army General Augusto Canadian television; the following year he entered the French film Pinochet declined to return authority to the civilian government; industry as a second assistant director, working with Yves and became ruled by a military junta that was in power from Allégret, Jacques Nahum, Jean Giono, and René Clair, among 1973 to 1990, ending almost 41 years of Chilean democratic rule. others. In 1962 he went to Greenland to shoot footage for a film The military junta that took over dissolved the Congress of Chile that was eventually abandoned and on his return he was assigned and began a persecution of alleged dissidents, in which thousands as first assistant director to Henri Verneuil on Un singe en hiver. In of Allende's supporters were murdered. 1963 he met Michèle Ray, a Chanel model who later became a war correspondent and spent a well-publicized three weeks in Viet Cong captivity during the ; the two were married in Algeria in 1967. During the first half of the Costa-Gavras worked as first assistant to René Clément (Le Jour et l’heure and Les Filèn), (Le Baie des anges), Marcel Ophuls (L’eau de banane), and Jean Becker (Echappement libre). Of these directors, Clément is thought to have influenced him most, both in his interest in political subjects and in his fondness for self-conscious stylistic effects. There was, however, no sign of the former (though plenty of the latter) in Costa-Gavras’ first film of his own, Compartiments tueurs (, 1965), described by one critic as “a nerve-tingling, nonpolitical, highly commercial film.” In fact, Costa-Gavras himself felt that he was too inexperienced to undertake a political project and so gathered together a group of friends— and his wife , her daughter Catherine Allegret, Jean-Louis Tringtinant, , and —for the adaptation of a novel by Sebastien Jarisot. From World Film Directors, Vol II. Ed. John Wakeman. The Montand, who starred in four of Costa-Gavras’ other H.wW, Wilson Company, NY, 1988. movies, plays a police detective trying to track down the murderer French director and scenarist, was born Konstantinos Gavris in of a sleeping-car passenger before more victims are claimed, while Klivia, in the Greek Pelopenneus (Costa is short for Constantin, the Signoret gave what was described as a “delicious performance” as French form of his name, and he subsequently added the hyphen an aging actress with a weakness for young men. Penelope Gilliatt “to create confusion”). He is the third of the three sons of a minor found the film “jumpy and gratuitous” in style and sickeningly government official, Panayotis Gavris, who emigrated from the violent, but most reviewers enjoyed it as a stylish thriller “with a soviet Union in 1922. His father was an atheist, but his mother was lot of character and wit,” and something of a tribute to American a deeply pious member of the Greek Orthodox church. Costa- movies. Gavras says that he was “plunged into religion. Completely The success of The Sleeping Car Murders brought Costa- suffocated by it. The sort of training that made it much easier for Gavras an offer to direct a World War II story, Un Homme de trop me to finally break away from the church.” (One man Too Many, 1967), in which a band of Resistance fighters During the German occupation of Greece, Panayotis break into a Nazi jail to free a dozen political prisoners and find Gavas joined the National Liberation Front (FAM), once the war themselves saddled with an unknown thirteenth man (Michel was over,the right-wing government repeatedly imprisoned him Piccoli) who may endanger them all. The film which Costa-Gavras and other Resistance fighters as suspected communists, and Costa- adapted himself from a novel by Jean-Claude Chabrol was Gavras was likewise barred from entering the university, holding selected to open the Moscow Film Festival in 1967. Two years an official post, or even obtaining a driver’s license. Opting to later it was released as Shock Troops by United Artists, who had leave the country, he first attempted to go to the United States, but re-edited it and supplied a happy ending. The director says that in the climate of McCarthyism was denied a visa; as a result he after that experience he never again left the final cut to others. went instead to Paris, where, with the help of family and friends, It was while preparing to shoot his next film, Le Fils (The he enrolled at the Sorbonne in comparative literature. He had been Son) starring Yves Montand, that Costa-Gavras discovered the an insatiable moviegoer as a child, though “all we saw in Greece Vasilis Vassilijos novel Z. Dropping the contract for The Son, he were Westerns and Errol Flynn,” plus a few Russian films shown began seeking backers for Z. With the help of his friend Jacques as anti-Soviet propaganda. The films he discovered at the Perrin, he finally set up a coproduction with the Algerian state film Cinématèque Française were a revelation to him, “especially company, ONCIC, and then teamed up with the Spanish writer American films of the 1930s like The Grapes of Wrath and Capra’s Jorge Semprun to adapt the screenplay. Z (1968) is a thriller movies.” The Italians Francesco Rosi and Federico Fellinni also centering on the murder of a politician (Yves Montand) in an unspecified Mediterranean country and the subsequent Costa-Gavras—MISSING-—5 investigation by a magistrate (Jean-Louis Trintignant) of interrogator. Penelope Houston wrote that the film’s “buttonholing unwavering integrity and determination. In fact, though the film tricks of style and artificially significant camera angles...pile was actually shot in Algeria, it is quite obviously a highly synthetic urgency on real urgency,” but found it all the same a fictionalized account of the assassination by fascist thugs of the “more disciplined, compelling and complex” picture than Z—we idolized Greek deputy Grigoris Lambrakis, a hero of the Left. As identify with Montand, but do not forget that the man he plays had the film goes on to show, the investigation uncovered such a helped to create the system that crucified him. This complexity and network of corruption in the police and the government that the sobriety may have limited the film’s financial success but right-wing Karamanlis regime fell. It was replaced by the reformist established it, in the eyes of a number of critics, as its director’s government of George Papandreou, ousted in 1967 in a coup d’état best picture. that installed a totalitarian military junta. Costa-Gavras said of L’Aveu that “the Russians did not The score was provided by Mikos Theodorakis, then like the film. Many French Communists hated it. The Maoists were under house arrest in Greece, and as Guy Flatley wrote, his divided, Stalinists enraged and Godard’s friends not at all “seething, swelling, raging music...lends an almost unbearable enthusiastic. Only the Italian party… [came] out unequivocally for tension to Z.” The film was shot by Raoul Coutard in the film.” Having thus alienated most of the socialists who had so Eastmancolor, and it seemed to Pauline Kael that “although the admired Z, Costa-Gavras went on to raise a great squall of photography is perhaps a little controversy in the United States too self-consciously with his next movie, État de siège dynamic...the searching, active (State of Siege, 1973). Scheduled style doesn’t let you get away.” for screening in the American Kael thought that the film Film Institute’s festival for the derived “not from the traditions inauguration of the Kennedy of French film but from Center in Washington, it was American gangster movies and abruptly withdrawn on the ground prison pictures and ‘anti- that it “rationalizes an act of Fascist’ melodramas of the political assassination.” forties...and, like those pictures, State of Siege was written it has a basically simple point by Costa-Gavras in collaboration of view.” with Franco Solinas, scenarist of For some critics, Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of indeed, the film was altogether Algiers. Like Z, it is a somewhat too simple: its tidy arrangement fictionalized version of an actual of characters into the event—the kidnapping by impeccably heroic and the unrelievedly villainous and its ringing guerrillas in Uruguay in 1970 of , an denunciation of tyranny years after the events related seemed American from the Agency for International Development whose designed to send audiences home in “the warm, safe glow of real job was to train the Uruguayan police in counter-insurgency communal outrage.” Less sophisticated viewers were both moved techniques. The ransom demanded by the Tupamaros was the and entertained , and Z enjoyed phenomenal success all over the release of all political prisoners, and when this was refused and world (though not in Greece, where it was banned). Among the police death squads made a series of raids showing how much they many honors it received were the New York Film Critics’ awards had learned from Mitrione’s tuition, he was murdered. for best film and best director. Mitrione (called Santore in the film) is played by “I’m neither a Communist nor a Socialist,” Costa-Gavras Montand as a brave, serious, well-intentioned man who is simply has said, “and I find leftist a rather vague expression. Let’s just say incapable of recognizing that the capitalist ethic is not universally I’ve learned to distrust any rigid ideology or party proposal that desired. At the end of the movie, another AID man is flown in to offers no alternative, that allows no criticism, and that too often replace him, but the camera singles out one defiant face from the tries to make people live according to borrowed ideas or in crowd at the airport as a prophetic hint of what is to come. In State imitation of others….Therefore since it seems impossible to of Siege, Costa-Gavras abandoned the subtleties of L’Aveu. Jay criticize from within I prefer to stay on the outside, though not Cocks found the new film “stylistically jazzy past the point of with a hostile attitude.” And having lacerated right-wing stridency,” employment “a sort of arythmic, staccato editing and totalitarianism in Z, he turned his blade against Stalinism in L’Aveu prminent, even aggressive music (by Mikos Theodorakis) to punch (The Confession, 1970), whose script by Jorge Semprun was based the movie along, giving it a kind of spurious suspense.” It did well on the autobiography of Artur London, a former deputy minister of at the box office. foreign affairs in the Czech government. London has been a victim In q 1974 interview with Pier Nico Solinas, Costa-Gavras of the 1952 Prague show trials—a faithful party functionary who explained his conception of political film: “To me it’s a film which suddenly found himself ostracized and watched, then arrested and brings to the surface a problem that people are ignoring or not brainwashed into a false confession. Imprisoned, London was thinking about, which makes them reflect upon, discuss, evaluate released without explanation after Stalin’s death. He went abroad this problem and makes them aware of it in political terms. It but returned to Czechoslovakia in the hope of rehabilitation in should be a film that shows the political mechanisms with which 1968—just in time to see Russian tanks rolling into Prague. we live, the mechanisms which cause things to be the way they are. L’Aveu follows London’s book very closely, with Thus a political film is one which provokes political reactions, Montand conveying a weary integrity in the lead, Simone Signoret political discussions, and political controversies. Starting from this playing his wife Lise, and Gabriele Ferzetti the genial, merciless premise I might also add that a political film must be popular, as Costa-Gavras—MISSING-—6 popular as possible so that these reactions, discussions, and achievement to date,” its script “a carefully interlocking work in controversies will automatically be far-reaching.” Costa-Gavras which present events and flashbacks are so seamlessly joined that next turned his attention to his adopted country in Section Spéciale the film’s forward momentum increases progressively, right up to (Special Section,1975), another highly profitable exercise in the smashing finale that surprises even though it has never been in “righteousness after the event,” condemned for its “loading of the doubt.” Philip French similarly applauded “Costa-Gavras’ ability moral dice” but enjoyed all the same for the director’s “special to grab you unawares by the lapels and drag you through the brand of all-star, gold-plated suspense.” In fact, there are no major labyrinth of intrigue and paranoia that lies beyond the more stars (though many excellent performances) in this reconstruction acceptable corridors of power,” though he thought that “as honest of a squalid episode in the history of the Vichy government of Ed and his daughter-in-law are reconciled, conflicting generations world War II. An officer of the occupying German forces is killed united against the smug establishment, the picture’s radical thrust by the Resistance, and to avert massive reprisals, the Vichy is turned into (or concealed behind) domestic drama.” authorities offer up six scapegoats, setting up a special court to The intense and high-powered debate provoked by “try” and condemn selected “troublemakers” already in custody. Missing centered on its specific claim that it was “based on a true Jorge Semprun drew on the researches of the historian Hervé story. The incidents and facts are documented.” In fact, as Flora Villeré to who how eminent judges , magistrates, lawyers, and Lewis pointed out in an article in (February politicians were drawn, more of less reluctantly, into this shameful 7, 1982), “the film gives only one point of view,” and Costa- victory of ends over means. Gavras “made no effort to speak with the government officials he Clair de femme (1979), with Montand and Romy portrays nor to consult the records.” The State Department took the Schneider as middle-aged lovers, was Costa-Gavras‘ first attempt movie seriously enough to issue a long rebuttal of its charges, and at a conventional romance and in January 1983 the former is likely to be his last. It was a American ambassador to Chile total failure, excoriated as “a and two of his aides filed a $150 monumentally trivial million libel suit against Costa- picturization” of Romain Gary’s Gavras, Universal, and others novel, “a glassy glossy.” The involved in the making of the director returned to more film. At about the same time it familiar territory in Missing won the Golden Palm at Cannes (1982)—literally familiar since (shared with Yilmaz Güney’s he had visited Allende’s Chile Yol), subsequently collecting an in 1971, defending the President Oscar for best adapted against right-wing charges that screenplay. he had attempted to suppress Hanna K. (1983) was L’Aveu during that year’s Gista-Gavras’ first political crucial municipal elections. thriller based on a fictional Missing, another situation rather than a historical political thriller with a basis in event, and it, like Missing, was fact, proved to be even more released by Universal Studios. An controversial than L’Aveu. ambitious attempt to explore the Charles Horman was a young American freelance writer who went thorny issue of Israel and the Palestinians, Hanna K. was actually to Chile to observe and support Allende’s socialist government, the synthesis of several projects the director had been considering working thee for a liberal newspaper. In the 1973 coup that for a decade or more—an invitation to make O Jerusalem in the brought the right-wing Pinochet regime to illegal power, Charles early 1970s, a film on the Paris Commune that he’d begun in 1970 Horman disappeared. His father, Edmund G. Horman, went to and which raised the issue of the excommunards expelled to in search of him and was informed by Charles‘ widow Algeria and the evolution of their colonial mentality, and finally a that he had been murdered with American connivance because he longstanding desire to make a film about a woman’s life. knew too much about United States involvement in the coup. Explaining how he and Franco Solinas wrote the screenplay, he Ed Horman, a pro-Nixon Christian Scientist businessman recalled, “Every year, events, a book, a screenplay. or a visitor at first ridiculed this theory as “Commie paranoia.” But the questioned us with the constancy of bad conscience. In 1978 American officials in Santiago were strangely unhelpful, Charles Franco went to Beirut. He came back shattered. But also did not reappear, and Horman gradually became convinced that his pessimistic, discouraged about our being able to write a daughter-in-law was right. In 1977, after four years of screenplay. So little by little our desire to write a film about a investigation, Ed Horman sued eleven American government woman, like those around us, took form….And it was only after officials for $4 million for negligence and wrongful death, but the we had been with her to Jerusalem in 1979 that we no longer left case was eventually dismissed on procedural grounds and for lack her.” of evidence. Meanwhile a lawyer named Thomas Hauser had been The film’s central character, Hannah Kaufman (Jill drawn into the crusade, and it was his book, TheExecution of Clayburgh) is a jewish-American woman who, in her Charles Horman (1979), that Costa-Gavras and Donald Stewart professional/political life, emigrates to Israel, becomes a lawyer, used as the basis for their script. and gets involved with the case of a Palestinian man, Selim Bakri Missing was filmed in , with Jack Lemmon (Mohammed Bakri) who is attempting to reclaim his family home playing Ed Horman and Sissy Spacek as his daughter-in-law Beth. in the village of Kurf Rimona, now part of the Russian-Jewish Vincent Canby thought it Costa-Gavras’ “most striking cinematic settlement of Kafr Rimon. In her personal life, meanwhile, her Costa-Gavras—MISSING-—7

“search for identity” (Costa-Gavras’ words) take her from a projects. Since 1982 he has served as president of the Cinématèque devoted French husband Victor Bonnet (Jean Yanne) to a brief Française; he subsequently became involved in the production of a affair with the Israeli chief prosecutor Joshua Herzog (Gabriel first film by Mehdi Charef, an Algerian immigrant whose Byrne), whose child she bears, and then to a romantic involvement autobiographical novel, Le Thé au harem d’Archi Ahmed (1983) with her Palestinian client. As in his earlier films, it is through the was a best-seller in France. Michèle Ray-Gavras had purchased the single mediating character of Hanna that Costa-Gavras attempts to film rights, originally as a vehicle for her husband, but Costa- engage his viewers in the larger political issues; here, her intimate Gavras turned the direction over to Charef—who had been aspiring conversations with Selim provide the rare opportunity for a to fillmmaking during years of factory work—and the resulting Palestinian point of view to be sympathetically expressed, while Thé au harem d’Archimède (Tea in the Harem, 1985), “presented her courtroom confrontations with Joshua allow her changing by Costa-Gavras” (who appears as the stills photographer in the perspective to emerge. But for lack of a concrete historical credits), was an immediate success, winning the Jean Vigo Prize, situation, the story trails off into melodrama, ending with a highly an Apple Foundation award for film distribution, and a second improbable dinner gathering of Hanna and her three lovers, past prize at the Chicago film festival. and present. A news bulletin After this collaboration announces a bombing in Kafr with Charef (whose next film Rimon; Joshua accuses Selim of was to be produced by Michèle the attack and summons the Ray-Gavras as well), Costa- police; Selim flees; Hanna orders Gavras resumed his own the other two men out and then, filmmaking but with a different as she retreats into the shower, orientation. As Variety put it finds her house surrounded by after the release of Conseil de the army of police that Joshua famille (Family Council, 1986), had summoned. “Humor has never been an Hanna K. opened to element in the socio-political lukewarm reviews at the Venice film world of Costa-Gavras, so Film Festival and more of the it’s a surprise to seethe director same in its commercial runs in now taking a stab at this ironic Paris and New York. Besides the universal conclusion that Jill comedy about a family of burglars done in by its own double Clayburgh was miscast in the role of Hanna (“An Unmarried standard of morality.” Based on a novel by the well-known author Woman Moves to Jerusalem” is how one critic retitled the film), of thrillers Francis Ryck, Family Council shows the transformation reviewers were fairly consistent in suggesting that Costa-Gavras’ of a family crime ring into the local affiliate of an international departure from a good-guys/bad-guys situation had left him with a syndicate based in the United States. When the father (French rock muddled story—in the words of Raphael Bassin, “an undigested star Johnny Halliday) returns home to his wife (Fanny Ardant) proposition that tries to make us understand a complex situation after a long stint in jail, his son, François breathes new life into the but doesn’t succeed.” The New York critics, perhaps less disposed operation, and over the years, the family enjoys the same upward toward Costa-Gavras, much less the Palestinians, to begin with, mobility aspired to throughout the working classes. Just at the were even harsher about what Stanley Kauffmann called “patent point when the father makes his American connection, though, the cheapness” and “marketplace ambiguity.” Cost-Gavras himself grown-up François (Remy Martin, the co-star of Charef’s Tea in told interviewers after the New York premiere, “This film is my the Harem) opts out for another “profession,” cabinetmaking. His most important political statement (to date) and is perhaps the most outrages father responds by calling a family counsel and locking radical of all my movies. The public perception is something else the son away until he consents to come back to the fold. Following again, and perhaps the style of the film—the way I approach the the rules of the game in which he has been raised, François subject—will turn out to be the film’s worst enemy. Some turns his father and their partner over to the police so that the rest (people), however, will find any reason to object to a film like of the family can pursue their dream of a “normal” life. this.” Departing from Costa-Gavras’ established style in form as While the film’s political thrust was undoubtedly a cause well as subject, Family Council is structured as a kind of film of some unwarranted criticism—in the extreme, David Denby within a film, with the family history presented through the first- wrote of “unconscious anti-Semitism”—even those who were person recollections of François. “It’s a lot of fun to change, to do favorably disposed towards Gosta-Gavras’ intentions questioned something else,” Costa-Gavras told Monique Martineau during the the extent to which he was successful, citing the rampant shooting; “In making a comedy I’m discovering the traps I didn’t implausibilities of the plot(at one point Selim is offered South know about. You have to find another tone, another way of telling African citizenship as a means of resettling in Israel if he will drop the story.” While Variety reviewer Len Borger found the result the claim to his family home), the stereotypical characters, the “stolidly lacking in visual imagination and narrative brio,” others inconclusive resort to melodrama at the end. Yet, as the Palestinian were more impressed. French critics Yves Alion and Jacqueline literary critic Edward Said pointed out in one of the more Lajeunesse, for example, wrote appreciatively of Costa-Gavras’ charitable reviews, the film’s singular achievement was the ironic inversion of French family values; for them, this seemingly presentation of the human dimensions of the Palestinian light entertainment took on “unexpected substance” through its experience, and for this reason, he argued, the strength of its social implications: “more than a comedy, Conseil de famille political message might override its aesthetic problems. seems like a bittersweet chronicle, a sentimental saga in In the wake of Hanna K., Costa- Gavras himself seems to halftones…” In any case, as Monique Marineau wrote at the end of have undertaken a reevaluation of his work while pursuing other a 1985 anthology devoted to “The Cinema of Costa-Gavras,” with Costa-Gavras—MISSING-—8

Family Council, the director seems to have broken out of the “Z the version I saw long ago at a preview, the sentence ended at formula,” but one can only ask, with Martineau, “Will it last?” “protect the innocent,” and was followed by another: “The guilty It is no doubt true that, as Vincent Canby writes, “all of are already protected.” Mr. Costa-Gavras’ politically inspired movies are, at heart, chase The point of the thinly disguised allusions is to avoid not thrillers.” There are many who maintain that his use of “rapid-fire the identification of the countries but too easy a limitation of the cross-cutting” and other techniques for building suspense are stories’ reach. These things happened in Greece or in Chile, and “manipulative” and inappropriate to the intensely serious issues things like them have happened and will happen elsewhere. Don’t that provide his themes. His defenders point out that his methods get too comfortable. Although, in fact, it is not strictly true that are far more effective in promoting widespread awareness and Chile is not identified in Missing. The beach resort of Viña del Mar discussion of these issues than, say, the more austere procedures of is named, and scenes are set there; an American diplomat uses the Jean-Luc Godard. word “Chilean”; and a coffin is delivered to the United States with “Pale, broad-shouldered and handsome,” Costa-Gavras is the words “From Santiago” prominently written on the side. But married to Michele Ray, a “red-headed beauty” whose much- Costa-Gavras is right about the effect of his strategy. If we have to publicized adventures as a freelance journalist include a period of figure out that this place is Santiago de Chile (or ), we captivity at the hands of the Vietcong in 1967. They have a son, will have necessarily figured out that it could be someplace else. and Michele Ray another by an earlier marriage. Costa-Gavras Costa-Gavras’s international background clearly has a lot became president of the Cinémathèque Française in 1982. to do with his themes and preoccupations, and the interplay between what’s actual and what’s possible in politics characterizes much of his work, from Z all the way through to his recent film Amen (2002), where what might have been done for the Jews in Nazi Germany is constantly contrasted with what was. He was born in Greece in 1933, finished his education in France, and went straight into film production, working as an assistant to René Clément, Yves Allégret, and Jacques Demy. His first full-length movie as a director was a straightforward but very sharp thriller, The Sleeping Car Murders (1965), about which he is now mildly (and wrongly) apologetic: “I didn’t like to start in this way but sometimes you have to make a thriller . . .” This work starred Yves Montand, who also appeared in several of the director’s other films (Z; The Confession, 1970; State of Siege, 1972; Clair de femme, 1979). Missing was his first American film and created, as it was meant to, a great deal of resistance and argument—even, although this was no doubt unintended, a lawsuit (for libel, ultimately dismissed, from State Department officials depicted in the film). It was and remains, however, a very popular movie, in the United Michael Wood: “Missing: ‘’Who Would Care About Us If We States and elsewhere. It won the Palme d’Or at Cannes and was Disappeared?’” (Criterion Notes) nominated for best picture at the Oscars. Jack Lemmon and Sissy The films of Constantin Costa-Gavras are often described Spacek were also nominated, and the film’s screenplay (by Costa- as political thrillers, and the phrase is helpful as long as we pause Gavras and Donald Stewart, and an uncredited John Nichols) won over it a little. There is always a strongly personal element to his the Oscar for best adaptation, from Thomas Hauser’s book The stories, a human factor, and the thrills are in the politics rather than Execution of Charles Horman (1978). set against a political background. The corpses and the cover-ups, Missing pointedly raised issues that for many people were whether in Europe or in , are intimate features of only dimly in the air at the time, and which have become more and actual historical situations—an assassination in Greece, an more unavoidable in recent years, as the United States has openly execution in Chile, genocide in Germany—rather than fictional assumed its imperial role. Of course, at least since the revolution in elements woven into a political context, as in The Manchurian Cuba in 1959, if not the Spanish-American War a half century Candidate (1962), say, or Salvador (1986) or In the Line of Fire earlier, there could be little doubt that the government of the (1993). United States intended to look very carefully after its interests in Of course, the films of Costa-Gavras are fictionalized, Latin America. But, the film asks, what are the constraints on how too, and he insists that he is not a maker of documentaries. But the this is done, and what do American citizens have a right to know very act of fictionalization, in his case, is discreetly political. Z about these activities? More dramatically—and this is where the (1969), a film about the murder of a Greek politician and the story kicks in—what if they get in the way? ensuing inquiry, doesn’t mention Greece and is not, Costa-Gavras As soon as the socialist was elected says, “a movie about Greece only.” But a title card at the beginning president of Chile in 1970, in spite of many avowed American says, “Any resemblance to actual events, to persons living or dead, attempts to have the election go another way, the question of a is not accidental. It is intended.” Similarly, the director says of military coup was on the table. But there is some distance between Missing (1982) that “the country where the story takes place is not doing what you can to influence an election in another country identified in the film,” and yet the film opens with the statement, (and accepting the result) and supporting a violent uprising; and readable on the screen and pronounced on the soundtrack by the indeed some distance again between supporting a homegrown voice of Jack Lemmon, that “some of the names have been rebellion and being the architect and engineer of the whole show. changed to protect the innocent, and also to protect the film.” In This is where the strong questions arise, and where doubts become Costa-Gavras—MISSING-—9 possible, even among those who support some forms of is anywhere to be found. He loves the boy but is scornful of his intervention. vague left-wing sympathies and lack of a steady job, and sees The coup occurred on September 11, 1973, and was led Beth’s distrust of the authorities as the product of knee-jerk by General , head of the armed forces, and later radicalism. “I don’t want to hear any of your anti-American seen as the savior of the country or one of the century’s major war paranoia,” he says. Gradually he learns to think differently of her, criminals, depending on your point of view. Allende was killed or and his change is all the more affecting and believable because committed suicide, and some forty to fifty thousand people were Sissy Spacek plays Beth with such quiet authority, mingling rounded up and imprisoned, many in the National Stadium in the tenderness and distress with an unmistakable courage. capital city. More than seven hundred and fifty of these detainees At last Ed Horman learns that the American embassy’s were executed without judgment. The general and his cohorts ruled elaborate show of looking for Charlie is a sham because Charlie the country as a military junta until 1974, when Pinochet declared has been dead for some time—since before Ed came down from himself head of state. Chile returned to democracy in 1990, and the United States, in fact. The scene in which he discovers this— Pinochet went into exile. and registers many other things at the same time—is both Costa-Gavras approaches the violent events of 1973 from underplayed and elaborately staged. Lemmon scarcely reacts, but the point of view of the baffled or frightened individuals caught up we know just what, and how much, he is thinking. He walks out of in them, opening his film on an intricate shot that places ordinary the office of the Ford Foundation, where he has heard the news, people in close visual relation to one another and to the larger, and finds himself alone in an immense and ornate stairwell, with dangerous world about them. A young man sits in the backseat of a marble steps running in four directions from a central landing. At car looking over a half-open window. Reflected in the window is a first he pays no attention to where he is, walks down a stair, then group of small children playing soccer in a dusty open space. starts to climb another, although the way out is down. Then he Then, still in the reflection, the children start to scatter, and a truck realizes what he is doing, turns, and leaves. It is as if the building full of soldiers comes into view, bristling with helmets and guns. is an image of the world that hasn’t been listening to him: still, We are on the outskirts of the city, and the coup has already begun. stylish, overwrought, indifferent. The young man is Charlie Horman (John Shea), an American soon to disappear in a raid, and the sense of invasion, of a peaceful, The hero of Missing, like the hero of Z, like the two civilian place turned into a war zone, dominates the first ten heroes of Amen, is a good man who changes his (conformist) minutes of the movie. At one point Sissy Spacek, as Beth, politics, or more precisely abandons his old political assumptions, Charlie’s wife, is caught out by the curfew and has to shelter in a for the sake of justice and what he learns of the truth. In Z, the man doorway all night, sporadic gunshots echoing around her and is a judge who at first can’t believe that the police and the army corpses visible on the street. have organized a group of thugs to disrupt an antinuclear Charlie has been in Viña del Mar with a friend, Terry demonstration and kill a man; in Amen, an SS officer and an Italian Simon, and has had some disturbing conversations with priest testify, against their professional class and to their cost, to Americans. One man speaks what is happening to the Jews boastfully of a job being done and in Europe in 1936 and after. Ed of moving on to Bolivia now; Horman doesn’t become less more generally, the sheer number American than he was, and he of military or pseudomilitary has no interest in the coup or Americans present is indeed in the possibility or the disconcerting to Charlie. What are extent of the involvement of the they doing here? Charlie makes it United States. But he home but is arrested a day or so recognizes when he is being later, taken to the National lied to, and he finds out how Stadium, as we later learn, and little he knows about what his singled out and executed. This is government is doing—what it possibly a random killing, as the feels it has the right to do in his death of one of Charlie’s friends, name. Frank Teruggi, seems to have been. And possibly it is something This is the real question, and a key issue of the Nixon era else. It is important to recognize that the little Charlie knows poses and after. How secret does secret policy have to be, and how much no threat to the Chilean military. What Charlie has learned is only secrecy is necessary? The American ambassador says to Ed that Americans have been involved in some way in the coup, but Horman, “Let’s level with each other, sir. If you hadn’t been not how or how much. The U.S. embassy in Chile maintains until personally involved in this unfortunate incident, you’d be sitting at close to the end of the movie that there has been no involvement of home, complacent and more or less oblivious to all of this.” Ed any kind by the United States, that the position of the country is Horman doesn’t argue. And the movie invites us not, alas, to one of strict neutrality. Charlie may have been killed because at disagree, since great regions of ignorance and complacency least he knew that this was wrong. constitute the fullest context for the film, but to ask what follows With Charlie’s disappearance, the focus of the movie from this obliviousness. The ambassador also makes clear that his shifts to his father, Ed (magnificently played by Jack Lemmon), a job is to protect American interests, not individual Americans, and conservative Christian Scientist from New York who has no doubt we can wonder how prevalent and acceptable this priority is, and that the government of his country means to do right in the world, whether it is not exactly upside down. or that, now that he has flown down to the country of the coup, the In the film’s most memorable scene, Beth and Ed visit a United States’ representatives will help him find his son, if his son morgue, finding there the body of Charlie’s friend Frank—whom Costa-Gavras—MISSING-—10

American officials had certified as definitely having left the Oscar for best foreign-language film. Z has recently begun an country in safety. Appalled and disheartened, Beth and Ed look anniversary tour with a screening in New York in a new 35mm around at a scene filled with bloodied and broken corpses. Then print. they turn their gaze upward in a movement of helplessness. The Lured to Hollywood in the 80s, Gavras has also made camera goes with them, and we see that the floor above, movies in English. Missing (1982), which won an Oscar for best semitransparent, is also covered with dead bodies, their silhouettes screenplay adaptation, probed another US-backed coup, this time hovering like huge black moths. Death is above and all around in Chile in 1973. As a conservative American (played by Jack Beth and Ed, and Costa-Gavras has achieved a small miracle: Lemmon) searches for his disappeared son, the journalist Charles through their sorrow he has individualized every member of this Horman, he is confronted by the depth of his country's collusion in unburied human mass. “I have often thought,” he said in an Pinochet's coup. (Gavras and Universal Studios successfully interview given just before the film was completed, “when I fought a libel suit filed by a former US ambassador to Chile during read . . . about twenty thousand people dead or lost, who were the coup.) Amen (2003) proved equally controversial, investigating those people? Who cared about them? Who would care about us if as it did the silence or complicity of the Catholic church and the we disappeared?” These are not political questions, although the allied powers in the Holocaust. violent and unnatural death of so many could scarcely fail to be Yet Gavras doesn't march behind the banner of political political in the broadest sense. cinema. All cinema is political, he says, even action movies showing "heroes saving the Earth only with a gun". Nor is he bound by the thriller. "Every story has its own style, which I try to find." His films are often based on fact ("Any similarity to persons or events is deliberate", Z announced). His interest is in the "pyramid of power", and in relationships destroyed by global politics, ideologies and beliefs. Yet alongside silent abuses of authority are those who resist - stubborn witnesses, upright judges, dissenting consciences. He films lone figures dwarfed by opulent buildings, or pacing the indifferent corridors of bureaucracy. For Gavras, "resistance is the most important thing".

Ed Rampell, “Costa-Gavras” (The Progressive, August 29, 2013) Costa-Gavras is arguably the world's greatest living political filmmaker. Born in , Greece, in 1933, to the son of a blacklisted father, Costa-Gavras immigrated to France when he was a student. Like others of his generation, including François Maya Jaggi, “French Resistance: Costa Gavras” (The Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, Costa-Gavras fell in love with film Guardian, 3 April 2009) at Paris's renowned Cinémathèque and studied movies at France's Costa Gavras recalls his shock at arriving at the Gare de national film school, IDHEC. After serving as René Clair's Lyon from Greece in 1954, at the "gloomy weather and black assistant director, Costa-Gavras began directing stylish films façades, and the look people give you if you don't speak the known for their dissident sensibility. language. My first impulse was to get back on the train and go His 1969 fact-based film Z, about police repression and home." the colonels' coup in Greece, won a Cannes Jury Prize and is one Now 76, he is one of French cinema's most internationally feted of the rare subtitled movies nominated for the Best Picture writer-directors, having made some 20 films over 45 years. A Academy Award. Zwas also nominated for Best Writing and Best student at the Sorbonne in the 50s, he still lives in Paris's Latin Director Oscars. It scored Oscars for Best Editing and Best Foreign Quarter, in a pink house off a courtyard hidden behind the Language Film, in addition to winning a Golden Globe. Boulevard Saint-Michel, where his grandchildren play around him. Aside fromZ, Costa-Gavras's oeuvre includes: 1973's He is a naturalised citizen, has a French knighthood and in 2007 State of Siege, about urban guerrilla warfare in South America; became president of the Cinémathèque Française, one of the 1982's Cannes Palme d'Or-winning Missing in which Jack world's largest film archives, lavishly rehoused in a Frank Gehry Lemmon and Sissy Spacek play Americans searching for a loved building across the Seine. one in Chile after General Pinochet's bloody coup; 1983's pro- This year marks the 40th anniversary of his landmark Palestinian Hannah K.; 1988's Betrayed, co-starring Debra Winger feature Z (1969), about an incorruptible judge investigating the and as a member of a rightwing militia; 1989's killing at a peace demo of a reformist politician, played by Yves Music Box, with Jessica Lange scoring an Oscar nomination as a Montand. With democracy disappearing in a fog of dirty tricks, lawyer defending her father charged with committing Nazi war conspiracy and cover-up, Z was an indictment of the US-backed crimes; 1997's Mad City, co-starring John Travolta and Dustin coup in Greece, and was banned there under the military junta of Hoffman in a drama about media sensationalism; and 2002's 1967-74. With dark humour, a faux-documentary style and a heartbreaking Amen, wherein a German officer and priest try to soundtrack by Mikos Theodorakis - then under house arrest - it save the Jews by informing Pope Pius XII about the Holocaust. made Gavras's name as master of a genre that married the pace and His latest film, Capital, is about the financial crisis and suspense of the action thriller with political critique, and it won an the power of banks. Costa-Gavras—MISSING-—11

In person, Costa-Gavras looks much younger than his Q: Your father was in the . eighty years. He is thoughtful and philosophical and speaks in Costa-Gavras: My life in Greece influenced what I am. My father lightly accented English. I interviewed him in a West Hollywood was in the left because he was against the king and his family, who hotel and reminded him that we had met once before, in 1975, had created a war against the Turks at the beginning of the last when as a Hunter College film student and aspiring journalist, I century to revive the Byzantine Empire. For three years, there was wrote my first paid article. It was about him. fighting, and all my father's friends died. So he hated the royal Q: Why did you make your new film, Capital? family. After the war, the king came back, and all the people like Costa-Gavras: I decided more than ten years ago now to make a my father lost their jobs. Worse, their kids had to furnish a movie about money. I saw money becoming more and more certificate that the family was pro-king. The kids of these people important everywhere. It's one of the most abstract and important could not pursue studies, so I had to run away to France to study. inventions by human beings. At the same time, money is capable I initially studied literature, and then I went to cinema school. I of extraordinary corruption in every kind of relationship. I tried to discovered the Cinematheque, and saw not only action movies and see how and why, more and more, money is becoming a religion. westerns, but also lots of serious movies. That was the initial idea. Q: Who are some of your biggest cinematic influences? Q: Capital touches upon the economic crisis. Under President Costa-Gavras: The first movie I saw at the Cinematheque was Obama, the Department of Justice hasn't locked up a single banker. [Erich von Stroheim's] Greed, and I was astonished to see you Costa-Gavras: No one anywhere has. This crisis started probably could do long movies with no happy ending. due to the freedom they gave to the banks. First President Reagan Kurosawa, no doubt, was a big influence. Movies sometimes more and then President Clinton. So, for Obama it is extremely difficult than directors have influenced me: The Grapes of Wrath, by John to change now, to find a way to organize this banking system Ford, was an extraordinary discovery. Sergei Eisenstein, of course. [differently]. In the U.S. more than any other place, the banking Later on, [Ingmar] Bergman. system is insane. Millions of Americans lost their houses. Because Q: Do you believe cinema can change the world? of what? Because of the banking system. This American banking Costa-Gavras: Cinema has changed the world. If you go to the system is also coming to Europe. We can say today that the banks beginning of the cinema, you can see that the world started and high financiers run the world. meeting other worlds. It was extraordinary. We saw how other Q: One point you're making in Capital is that there's a difference people were living and thinking. How they were sad or happy. We between American and also saw the body -- naked or European-style capitalism. half-naked people, which was Costa-Gavras: The difference prohibited everywhere by used to be very strong. It's less religions. This was extremely and less now. When I was important. Essentially, preparing the script, I met with filmmakers have to be free and some of the most important not directed by power or bankers in Paris. I was told that politicians. the American banks became Q: Z is arguably the most completely free, without any successful political film ever control or any rules, and that made, and it seemed to isolate the they had to imitate them little by . little. If not, they would be Costa-Gavras: The movie in a swallowed by the American banks. certain way helped to show what the colonels were, how stupid Q: Capital moves very briskly. they were. Some of the traditional, conservative newspapers spoke Costa-Gavras: Thank you. It's a story about a part of our society very well about the junta at the beginning. When Z came out, they where everything goes very fast. Every morning you have the saw they were not such good guys. economic news from all over the world, from television, radio, the Q: You've directed a number of movies about Nazis (Special Internet, and an hour later the news changes and the numbers Section, Music Box, and Amen) and neo-Nazis (Betrayed). Do you change. People run fast from one place to another, which is very fear Greece's Golden Dawn party could take over there and that risky because they don't have enough time to think. neo-fascist parties can rise to power in other European countries? Aggressive capitalism leads the world, and we can see the results, Costa-Gavras: Every time you have a crisis in a country you have especially in Europe: more poverty for the vast majority, and more an extreme wing coming up and proposing solutions. In Z, the riches for a few. Golden Dawn is there already, if you remember -- those Christian, Q: Describe your politics today. rightwing people. The way to fight them is by doing lots of work Costa-Gavras: It's a tough question because I'm catalogued as teaching people that every time these fascist systems gained power leftwing. What does "leftwing" mean? Because the term is very they ended up with big tragedies -- lots of blood, lots of police, and vague. Sometimes there are leftwing governments I'm very critical lots of misery. of. For me, being leftwing is to live in a society where there's Q: On the other extreme, do you think there's a possibility of a permanent change. It also means to respect the freedom of socialist revolution in Greece and/or any of the other European everybody, and to not accept big organizations or rich, powerful countries? people holding power. So, it's to have real democracy and freedom. Costa-Gavras: It depends what you call "socialist revolution." And, of course, giving everyone a chance at the ballot box. But Q: In the Bolshevik sense? essentially being leftwing for me means fighting for the dignity of the people. Costa-Gavras—MISSING-—12

Costa-Gavras: No, we saw what happens with Bolsheviks. It was I finally decided to make Missing for several reasons. One is another catastrophe. I don't have the solution. The moviemaker can because I knew the Chilean system. The story did not take place in ask questions but not give solutions. the U.S. but outside. It was a story of a father looking for his son, Q: You made The Confession in the 1970s. In the end, when the which I knew also. So I made it. I also asked the American Soviets invade Czechoslovakia, somebody paints graffiti: "Lenin producers to do it with my French crew and to do post-production wake up; they've gone mad." in France. Costa-Gavras: Yes, because it was exactly what the students All the American films I have done under those conditions, and it wrote on the walls of Czechoslovakia at that time. was a good thing because I also had full freedom. If they hadn't Q: Having made such a great movie about Eastern European given me full freedom, I would have stayed away. regimes, how do you feel about the collapse of these Stalinist-type Q: Is it easier making political films in France than in the U.S.? states? Costa-Gavras: In the U.S., some extraordinary movies have been Costa-Gavras: It was a normal conclusion. Because they used to made on politics and social issues. We learned lots of things from make extraordinary promises about the happiness of the people and American cinema. But in the last ten or fifteen years, this has so forth, but the policies they implemented were completely changed drastically. Today, that kind of movie is much easier to contrary to that. So those systems collapsed. make in Europe. Q: State of Siege and Missing are harshly critical of U.S. policy I was talking with one of the producers of Missing, and he said, "It toward Latin America. Were you ever banned from the United would be impossible to make Missing today here in the U.S." States for these portrayals? Q: What do you think of the new left-leaning governments in Latin Costa-Gavras: No, never. Missing was entirely financed by the America? Americans, by Universal. And State of Siege, half the money came Costa-Gavras: Oh, I think there has been a major change from the U.S. People say "the Americans" or "the United States," compared to what Latin America used to be thirty-forty years ago. as if it was a kind of bloc. It's not. There's a lot of people thinking The American influence is not so aggressive anymore. The differently from other people in the U.S. This is very interesting to American big business influence in Latin America is not as strong, me and very important. so people can vote and they can have a different life than before. Q: What's the difference between working in Hollywood and They can have more liberal, more interesting, and more democratic Europe in terms of making political movies? governments. Costa-Gavras: After the success of Z in the U.S., I was asked to Q: What are your reflections upon turning eighty? come here and make lots of movies. I refused because I had to Costa-Gavras: You know every time you change a decade, it's a make The Confession and other movies in Paris, and I didn't feel problem, because you approach the end little by little. But my comfortable because I didn't know American society enough to decision is to keep going. The problem is always to know when the make movies about here. head doesn't work well. Someone has to tell you. I hope my children will tell me.

COMING UP IN BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS 31 Oct 27 Roland Joffé, The Mission, 1986 Nov 3 Mira Nair, Mississippi Masala, 1991 Nov 10 Hayao Miyazaki, Princess Mononoke, 1997 Nov 17 Elia Suleiman, The Time That Remains, 2009 Nov 24 Terry Gilliam, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, 2009 Dec 1 Béla Tarr, The Turin Horse, 2011 Dec 8 Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, A Matter of Life and Death/Stairway to Heaven, 1946

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