Watched this Michael Cacoyannis drama last night. It is depressing, yet starkly brilliant. The cast was unknown to me, but probably well-known to Greeks. A sensitive Audrey Hepburn-like Ellie Lambeti played Marina, the "girl in black". Dimitris Horn was a darkly handsome, Pavlos. And George Foundas a creepy Christos, villian of the piece. The acting was striking, at times the faces looked like masks in a Greek tragedy. It is about a clash of civilizations, Greek style, when two cosmpolitan Athenians arrive on a small Greek island for a week's vacation. The island is completely backwards and medieval in its mentality. Gangs of youths prey on the villagers, enforcing a strict code of morality in a violent way. However, our two Athenians are unaware of the world of darkness they have entered. It is so sunny on the island--they have come to swim and have fun, after all. So, they rent rooms in the dilapidated mansion of a Greek widow and her two children--brought there by a dockside tout, who has diverted them from the more sterile tourist hotel. The two Athenian holiday makers are a study contrasts themselves--the bald one is a hardworking architect, who sketches by the waterfront. The good-looking one is a playboy who lives with his mother. I won't give away the plot, except to say it involves the two Athenians clashing with each other--and the remaining Athenian clashing with the entire town, except the title's girl in black. For all the talk about honor killings in Islam these days, the film shows that rural Greece was just as repressive, religious, and opposed to cosmopolitanism in 1956 as anywhere today. The tragic death of innocents that concludes the film has a symbolic message about the future of Greece, it would seem. Luckily, Greece seems to have made the transition to modernity. Which gives one hope that half a century from now, perhaps the violence accompanying the clash of civilzation we see these days will becomeas much of a bad dream as Cacoyannis's story of an Athenian "vacation from hell."
Monday, September 25, 2006
The Girl in Black (1956)
Watched this Michael Cacoyannis drama last night. It is depressing, yet starkly brilliant. The cast was unknown to me, but probably well-known to Greeks. A sensitive Audrey Hepburn-like Ellie Lambeti played Marina, the "girl in black". Dimitris Horn was a darkly handsome, Pavlos. And George Foundas a creepy Christos, villian of the piece. The acting was striking, at times the faces looked like masks in a Greek tragedy. It is about a clash of civilizations, Greek style, when two cosmpolitan Athenians arrive on a small Greek island for a week's vacation. The island is completely backwards and medieval in its mentality. Gangs of youths prey on the villagers, enforcing a strict code of morality in a violent way. However, our two Athenians are unaware of the world of darkness they have entered. It is so sunny on the island--they have come to swim and have fun, after all. So, they rent rooms in the dilapidated mansion of a Greek widow and her two children--brought there by a dockside tout, who has diverted them from the more sterile tourist hotel. The two Athenian holiday makers are a study contrasts themselves--the bald one is a hardworking architect, who sketches by the waterfront. The good-looking one is a playboy who lives with his mother. I won't give away the plot, except to say it involves the two Athenians clashing with each other--and the remaining Athenian clashing with the entire town, except the title's girl in black. For all the talk about honor killings in Islam these days, the film shows that rural Greece was just as repressive, religious, and opposed to cosmopolitanism in 1956 as anywhere today. The tragic death of innocents that concludes the film has a symbolic message about the future of Greece, it would seem. Luckily, Greece seems to have made the transition to modernity. Which gives one hope that half a century from now, perhaps the violence accompanying the clash of civilzation we see these days will becomeas much of a bad dream as Cacoyannis's story of an Athenian "vacation from hell."