Greek cinema today for many boils to one of its major exports into Hollywood, Yorgos Lanthimos. Prior to his Oscar-winning The Favourite, he was globally recognized with an Oscar nomination for his film, Dogtooth, from 2009. The late 2000s/early 2010s is what some critics called the Greek New Wave (or “Weird Wave”) as other directors including Panos Koutras and Athena Rachel Tsangari also had international hits with similar themes. While the country rioted over the debt crisis in 2008, these new, younger filmmakers came out with a startling, absurdist message of society in the midst of social anarchy. However, this is just the latest era in an industry self-contained 100 years ago and far from other European nations.
The First Half
The pioneers of Greek cinema also helped out countries that make up the Balkans (Albania, North Macedonia, and Bosnia to name a few countries) plus modern-day Turkey. Two brothers, Yanaki and Milton Manaki began as photographers and traveled the continent before reaching London where they bought their first movie camera and took it back home to Greece. They began shooting short documentaries and were even hired by the King of Yugoslavia and the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire to photograph and film various royal events. The First World War disrupted their work and their studio was bombed in 1916.
Others picked up a camera and recorded the battle Greek soldiers faced in their next conflict, the Grecco-Turkish war from 1919 to 1922. It wouldn’t be until 1924 when they had their first commercial success with the comedy Villar in the Women’s Baths of Faliro. The director Dimitris Gaziadis founded the first major film studio called Dag Films and produced a string of successful films into the 1930s. A 1931 movie, Daphnis and Chloe, featured the first nude scenes in European cinema and was the first export film from Greece. The industry, however, had its growth cut off due to a brain drain from numerous artists due to the new government’s dictatorship, followed by Nazi German occupation during the Second World War.
A Golden Age
After the Second World War and Civil War (1946-49), Greek society settled down to rebuild as a nation, beginning a new period of creative work in the movie industry. As film festivals began all over the continent, Greece was eager to show more of its work and its talent. During the 40s, Greek actress Katina Paxinou went to Hollywood and won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance in For Whom The Bell Tolls. The company Finos Film was founded and became one of the most productive studios in Europe, giving new directors their place to make Greek classics.
Writer/director Michael Cacoyannis began with the internationally acclaimed Stella (1955) and would receive multiple Oscar nominations for Best International Film, plus a joint-Hollywood production of Zorba The Greek (1964) starring Anthony Quinn which was nominated for Best Picture. Stella starred Melina Mercouri, arguably the “First Lady of Greek Acting,” and she would marry American expatriate Jules Dassin, who would direct her in Never On Sunday (1960), which earned both of them Oscar nominations for a Greece-produced movie. Other key figures include Alekos Sakellarios, Nikos Tsiforos, Nikos Koundouros, and Irene Papas, who would also work in Hollywood on both Zorba and The Guns of Navarone starring Gregory Peck, David Niven, and Quinn himself. Color in film arrived in the mid-50s and most of their works were comedies or adaptations from traditional Greek tales. The Thessaloniki Film Festival, one of the oldest in Southeast Europe, began in 1960 and has attracted many internationally acclaimed directors with annual tributes to a different auteur every year.
The biggest name of all from this era was Costa-Gavras, who would attend film school in France because his father was a member of the Communist Party, which was banned at the time. Gavras, a political leftist, was abroad when the public murder of a popular politician and the events leading to a military coup in 1967 inspired his political thriller, Z (1969). Starring Yves Montand, Irene Papas, and Jean-Louis Trintignant, the film was a smash around the world and a direct call to protest against the brutal regime which had banned anything remotely leftist in nature. The title itself refers to the Greek slogan which translates to, “He lives,” referring to the murdered politician. Z would win the Oscar for Best International Film plus a Best Picture nomination and launch Gavras’ career.
Into Contemporary Times
The dictatorship ended in 1974 and liberal moviemaking was back again, this time with the help of Melina Mercouri, who had transitioned to being a politician as the Minister of Culture in the 1980s. She helped the Greek film industry receive support from the government in funding more projects and distribute the movies more often to major film festivals. Michael Cacoyannis, Costas Ferris, and Theo Angelopoulos became major players during this era; Angelopoulos himself would win the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1998 for his film Eternity And A Day, making it the first Greek film to win the award. While Costa-Gavras had also won it for 1982’s Missing, he did so with a film produced in Hollywood.
That leads to the recent decade where Greek cinema has been noted again with some interesting, dark, scandalously comic work. Dogtooth is a surreal-looking story about a couple who keep their three teenagers as prisoners at home and continuously lied about what happens in the outside world. It’s a concept straight from the idealism of Luis Bunuel in mocking the horror of Greece’s vision that things were supposed to be good when it was all problematic underneath. Another is 2012’s Attenberg by Athena Rachel Tsangari, a tragic comedy about a young woman caring for her dying father while keeping herself isolated from the rest of society because of her sexual inexperience. Played at the Venice Film Festival, jury head Quentin Tarantino publically applauded the film. And, 2009’s Strella by Panos Koutras examines the unlikely affair between a middle-aged ex-convict and a younger trans prostitute.
One final note about the country’s film industry is the music. The composers have worked on hundreds of Greek films throughout their careers, overlapping multiple projects to create a melody that has molded the Greek style in moviemaking. Manos Hatzidakis and Mikis Theodorakis are two legends in Greek film composing, but the most recognized internationally is Vangelis, who won the Oscar for his immortal score in Chariots of Fire and would later score Blade Runner and Alexander. It adds to the uniqueness of the Hellenic state and its interpretation of storytelling for many audiences.
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