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Kazantzakis and the Cinema

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2016

Timothy W. Taylor
Timothy W. Taylor*
Affiliation:
Dartmouth College
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Extract

Alexis Zorbas unwittingly displays a knowledge of the cinema when he says to the Boss, [‘Anything we couldn’t say with our mouths we said with our feet, our hands, our belly or with wild cries’.] Kazantzakis himself once said the same thing in a different way: ‘To succeed in transforming the abstract concepts into simple, clear images is my great aspiration’. These words – written to his future wife Eleni Samios and referring to the cinema’s influence on The Odyssey – are the starting point for the rest of Kazantzakis’ more complex theories on film, the distillation of the lessons he learned from motion pictures and later applied to his writing. But before continuing, we can create a helpful context for the author’s concern with film by supplying some historical background.

Type
Research Article
Information
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies , Volume 6 , 1980 , pp. 157 - 168
Copyright
Copyright © The Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham 1980

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References

1. Kazantzakis, (Athens, 1959), p. 97; Zorba the Greek (New York, 1953), pp. 72–3.

2. Helen Kazantzakis, Nikos Kazantzakis: A Biography Based on His Letters (New York, 1968), p. 187.

3. Ibid.

4. L. Moussinac, Naissance du cinéma (Paris, 1925), p. 23. (‘… this extreme poetic aspect of things or people susceptible of being revealed to us exclusively by the cinema’.)

5. Helen Kazantzakis, pp. 185, 187.

6. Ibid., p. 189.

7. Bien, P., ‘ Buddha, Kazantzakis’ Most Ambitious and Most Neglected Play’, Comparative Drama, XI (1977), 258.Google Scholar

8. Ibid., p. 267.

9. Faure, E., ‘The Art of Cineplastics’, in Film: An Anthology, ed. Talbot, D. (Berkeley, 1967), p. 8.Google Scholar

10. Ibid., pp. 6–7.

11. Helen Kazantzakis, p. 168.

12. Ibid., p. 190.

13. P. Bien, 1977), p. 106. The original source is (Athens, 1965), p. 306.

14. Helen Kazantzakis, p. 186.

15. English translation by Friar, K. in The Odyssey: A Modem Sequel (New York, 1958).Google Scholar

16. Helen Kazantzakis, p. 187.

17. Bien, ‘Buddha, Kazantzakis’ Most Ambitious and Most Neglected Play’, P. 254.

18. Nikos Kazantzakis, in his III (Athens, 1956), p. 662. Cited and translated by Bien, ‘Buddha …’, p. 255.

19. Nikos Kazantzakis, Toda Raba (New York, 1964), p. 211–12.

20. Kazantzakis, Nikos, Toda-Raba (Paris, 1962), p. 7 (p. 12 of the English translation).Google Scholar

21. Ibid., p. 4 (p. 9 of the English translation).

22. Ibid., p. 156 (p. 131 of the English translation).

23. Ibid., pp. 106–7 (p. 90 of the English translation).