(SPOILERS THROUGHOUT)
I knew of the movie long before I ever watched it. Based on a book.
There is one main reason to watch this film: Anthony Quinn’s performance as Alexis Zorba. It’s magnificent. Zorba is now and will forever belong to Quinn just as Stanley Kowalski belongs to Brando, or Travis Bickle belongs to De Niro.
The plot is kind of contrived. Fickle, effete Brit (Alan Bates) moves to Crete to resurrect his father’s coal mine, which was never very much to begin with. But don’t most great stories have a rather contrived plot? I mean, isn’t the point of any story the adventure? The characters? What they learn, how they interact? How they grow? Hitchcock called it the “MacGuffin.”
These days, Zorba’s character resembles what is often called the “manic pixie dream girl.” He has a lust for life that the central protagonist lacks, and his presence alone adds zest to every scene. He may not amount to much when you add it all up, but by God he knows how to live!
Neal Cassady was Jack Kerouac’s MPDG. There are probably many others who fit that model.
(I think Penny in the Big Bang Theory was basically an MP dream girl.)
Even though I’m the kind of guy who can politicize a cup of tea, this story was exceedingly light on politics, aside from the abject poverty of the island people, and their basic stupidity and mean-spiritedness, which seems to be a human condition all over the world, especially in rural America.
There is only one identifiable rich man in the film, and while he’s not wearing jodhpurs, he is wearing knee-high leather boots—and he’s dressed and groomed very well while everybody else is shabby and wearing rags—and all of the men in the village bow to him like dogs. His wimpy twenty-something son wanted to marry the strikingly beautiful local widow in her mid-thirties (Irene Papas), but she would have nothing to do with the boy.
So...the rich man’s son drowns himself...and the widow goes to the church to pay her respects...but she is turned away, chased, stoned, and ultimately murdered because she wouldn’t marry the rich man’s son.
That was a tough scene to watch.
The death of the old French hotel proprietress was also disturbing, but I think they left it in there because that’s actually how it was on Crete back then.
In the end, the coal mine is a failure and the Brit has no choice but to head back home to England. Zorba dances with his boss on the beach, a scene that was said to have been improvised.
An odd, haunting film filled with quotable lines. Not for everyone, but worth a watch.