Zorba the Greek

This is my eighth year of turning back the calendar at year's end to take a look fifty years in the past by viewing the five nominated films for the Best Picture Oscar. I'll start at the end of the alphabet with the only of the quintet I had not seen before, Zorba the Greek, directed by Michael Cacoyannis.

As I have seen the other four, I can know in an instant that this is the one I like least. Perhaps it's dated, or perhaps it's just me, but I found this film unengaging. During it's almost two-hour-twenty-minute running time, I kept wanting to check my email for play Words With Friends.

The story is an old one when considering the history of Anglo-Saxon culture: an uptight white guy learns to live with the help of an exotic, in this case an incorrigible Greek man who, we are led to believe, knows how to live life with gusto. Today he'd be in a beer commercial.

Our uptight white guy is Alan Bates (today he would be played by James McAvoy), who's father was Greek. He has come to Crete to check on the land left to him, and to try to resurrect a mine. Lucky him, at the port in Athens he runs into Zorba (Anthony Quinn, playing the role that would most define him). Quinn is looking for work, and while Bates' innate English skepticism keeps him at bay, he realizes he need a mining expert, which Quinn is. A deal is struck.

Bates is treated like visiting royalty, as the townspeople hope to profit by the re-opening of the mine. The men stay in a hotel run by Lila Kedrova, who has been married several times (all to admirals) and is now living in loneliness. Quinn hopes Bates will take her, but he ends up seducing her, though to her it means much more.

Bates, on the other hand, is intrigued by "the Widow," (Irene Papas) who is still in mourning clothes, and rejects the attention of the son of the mayor of the town. This will lead to no good, and showcase's the barbarity of a very religious people.

The film's strength is Quinn's performance. He was a go-to guy for any ethnicity (he wasn't a lick Greek, as much as he was Arab in Lawrence of Arabia) but commands the picture. Bates is pretty much a non-entity, and Kedrova over-acted her way to an Oscar.

I think if the film is remembered at all it's for the final scene, with Quinn and Bates dancing on the beach (this was memorably parodied in the SNL short that showed John Belushi as the only living Not Ready for Prime Time Player. Why did he live? "I danced!"). The Greek music, composed by Mikis Theodorakis, has now become a staple at sports stadiums when a rally is needed.