FOX HOME VIDEO
ANTHONY QUINN SPECIALIZED in ethnic bravado. He was Hollywood's all-purpose swarthy Mexican, Frenchman, Italian and—in his finest performance—the wise, life-loving Greek everyman, Zorba. If the cast of My Big Fat Greek Wedding seemed cartoonish, it's only because none of those amiable performers had Quinn's gift for majestic emotion. The plot (from a novel by Nikos Kazantzakis, who wrote The Last Temptation of Christ) follows a bookish Brit (Alan Bates) who arrives in Greece to claim the house and acreage of his inheritance. Sure enough, he gets a lesson in impolite human nature, observing the people of his homeland as they struggle with ancient tradition and uncivilized instincts.
Hiring the itinerant Zorba to work the mineshaft on his property, Bates receives invaluable guidance about his cultural heritage and his own timid nature. This sounds like a heterosexual Auntie Mame, but Cacoyannis avoids campiness through his ambassadorship. He's dedicated to introducing and preserving rustic, Hellenic authenticity—an approach that the West welcomed after World War II. Only the Romany director Tony Gatlif continues this curatorial project, and his best films surely took inspiration from Cacoyannis' lusty Zorba.
Quinn transcends being a Hollywood touchstone for this film (occasionally spoken in Greek with English subtitles). He makes Zorba a man of the soil and the loins but never exaggerates the accent or gestures. When he points Bates' attention to a seductive young widow (the spectacular Irene Pappas), Quinn's gleaming eyes and gravelly voice are startlingly seductive. He is, indeed, the Life Force in scruffy human form.
Cacoyannis equalizes this affirmative figure by confronting rural catastrophe. When the naive Bates witnesses the destiny of Pappas' character and the charming old tart Lila Kedrova, this film offers an astonished record of man's inhumanity to womankind. Cacoyannis is not known for impressive visual technique, but he had great luck here in the harmony of his cast's facial iconography. Although Quinn projects a wonderful light-eyed shiftiness, it is the dark hair and onyx eyes of Bates and Pappas that make the film unforgettable. Both embody a handsome, Mediterranean gravity. They make this feel-good picture more serious and, frankly, more stunning than a mere romp. By daring to be deeply, classically tragic, Zorba the Greek justifies its title character's insistence on the richness of life.
ARMOND WHITE
