For Greeks, there are names that throb in their ears like the pulse of history: Zorba the Greek and its creator Nikos Kazantzakis, Melina Mercouri and her exiled husband Jules Dassin, Costa-Gavras, and Theo Angelopoulos.
Beside these, the voice of Maria Callas is heard from afar, and the shadow of the billionaire Onassis stretches across the Aegean; the lives of both eventually became fodder for American cinema, though the actors portraying them had no connection to Greece.
And another name, fiery and enduring: Irene Papas.
A woman furious and long-suffering in Rome, Open City, in Zorba the Greek, in The Message and Lion of the Desert. In Iran, years ago and thanks to our television, she was even more familiar to Iranians than to her own countrymen!
Of course, Greeks too have their beloved films to which they return in times of longing or remembrance: from Zorba the Greek to Melina Mercouri’s filmography—and, in more recent years, 300.
I remember years ago, in an interview I conducted with Anthony Quinn—the most enduring Zorba in the history of cinema, Zorba for all generations and all cultures—he made an interesting remark about his dance before the camera: “When it came time to perform that dance in Zorba the Greek, my leg had been broken in an accident, but I played the moment with such force that no one noticed!”
The year 2007 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the passing of Nikos Kazantzakis, the poet, novelist, and playwright whose ideas shake the soul. That year I was a guest of the Thessaloniki Festival. Greece’s Ministry of Culture dedicated the year to him; Greek festivals kept his memory’s lamp burning, and cinemas revived his works: Zorba the Greek by Michael Cacoyannis, He Who Must Die by Jules Dassin, and The Last Temptation of Christ by Martin Scorsese.
Dassin, the exiled director of American cinema, did not separate from his love (Melina) even in exile. Never on Sunday brought him a Cannes prize and gave Melina Mercouri worldwide renown. Melina came from a powerful family: her grandfather was the mayor of Athens, her father the minister of the interior. But she chose another path: “the path of struggle…” She married Dassin in Paris. Yet her love was not only for cinema—it was for her homeland. City by city and country by country, with eyes full of tears, she asked the peoples of the world not to allow the birthplace of philosophy and the cradle of democracy to remain in the clutches of a handful of base colonels.
The military feared her: they revoked her citizenship, seized her property, even plotted her death. But fate decreed that she would pass by death and live.
When Melina returned to her country, she remained an actress—but this time not on the stage or screen, rather on the stage of politics. She became a member of parliament, then minister of culture, and she had her eyes on the summit of the presidency; but lung cancer silenced this feminine ardor at seventy-three. Even so, her voice still lives in Greek ears: “I was born Greek and I will die Greek. They were born fascists and they will die fascists.”
On the day of her funeral, more than a million people poured into the streets. That day, Athens was not merely a city; it was a heart beating for its hero—an event that became indelible in Europe’s history.
Melina Mercouri, this woman of cinema and politics, once said: “I oppose any form of capital punishment, but if I were faced with someone who, for money, had sold the heritage of his homeland to foreigners, I would place my hand on my heart and vote for his death. Because selling a nation’s identity is the selling of a people’s shared soul. One who sells the homeland will shrink from no betrayal. Better that such a person not remain alive.”
