DURING A two-year stint in China I was often asked by people who had never heard of Cyprus what its most famous product was. I would tell them about halloumi cheese and perhaps of the sweet wine Commadaria. I should have told them of Michael (Michalis) Cacoyannis, the Limassol-born director, producer and screenwriter who passed away a week ago in Athens at the age of 89, and the only Cypriot ever nominated for a Best Director Oscar.
There is a reason Cacoyannis was not the first thing that sprang to mind about Cyprus but to explain I have to talk about his career first.
Cacoyannis is famous for 1964 film, Zorba the Greek, starring Anthony Quinn, nominated for seven Academy Awards including Best Director and winning three.
The film was based on the eponymous book by Nikos Kazantakis and featured a bigger than life Alexis Zorba.
“God has a very big heart but there is one sin he will not forgive,” Zorba tells the uptight Englishman, Basil (Alan Bates), slapping the table forcefully. “If a woman calls a man to her bed and he will not go.” The dance at the end of the film, Sirtaki, is still very popular.
Perhaps the drunken men dancing on tables at popular venues in parts of Cyprus remember Zorba’s ecstatic exclamation: “Did you say dance? Come on my boy!”
Cacoyannis reportedly said he hated it when he kept getting mentioned as the director of Zorba the Greek. “But it can’t be helped and I ignore it,” he told the Jerusalem Post’s Barry Davis more than ten years ago.
Cacoyannis’ first love was the theatre which he studied at the Old Vic in London where he was sent in 1939 to become a lawyer.
He moved to Greece in 1953 and made his first film, Windfall in Athens, which was nominated for a Golden Palm at the Cannes Film festival. More critically acclaimed and award winning films followed.
Stella (1955) established Cacoyannis’ talent and introduced Melina Mercouri as a femme fatale figure, a free spirit reluctant to accept the idea of marriage to football player singer Miltos. She fails to show up in church despite Miltos’ death threats.
Among Greek speakers the phrase “Stella… I’m holding a dagger” is still used.
Cacoyannis then directed A Girl in Black (1956) starring the beautiful Ellie Lambetti who appeared in his first film and also starred in A Matter of Dignity (1958).
Throughout his life Cacoyannis maintained a love for stage, directing plays for six decades, a career spanning longer than his film career. Scores of people stormed the stage in 1983 after watching Cacoyannis’ Electra kiss and hug the protagonist, Irene Papas.
“Nothing similar has ever happened before,” Greek newspaper Eleftheros Tipos said at the time. Papas had also starred in his film version of Electra two years before Zorba the Greek.
The film was the first of Cacoyannis’ Euripides trilogy with The Trojan Women following in 1971 and Iphigenia in 1977. His love for the classics also included William Shakespeare.
He translated some of his plays to Greek, directing Romeo and Juliet in Paris (1968-70), Antony and Cleopatra in Greece (1979) and Hamlet (2004-5).
His last play was an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus in 2005.
The play, on stage for two days only, was heavily attended by politicians and artists in Greece. Cacoyannis’ translated the play years before directing it.
As if all that was not enough, Cacoyannis also wrote the screenplays for all his films, usually on his own, directed opera and even wrote the lyrics to several songs including two for his Stella composed by Manos Chatzidakis and performed by Mercouri.
And if you happen to take a stroll in Athens, thinking perhaps that for all its troubles the lights of Acropolis give charm and poise to the city, then you would be paying tribute to Michael Cacoyannis.
He envisioned and worked towards the creation of Friends of Athens, enlisting Pierre Bideau to study the illumination, lobbying for funding via Friends of Athens with the project finally receiving backing from Greek authorities.
When his death was announced, Cypriot politicians and officials paid tribute to him talking of the way his work inspired everyone and prompted international interest and admiration.
It is ironic then that his documentary film Attila ’74 (1975) is not readily available in Cyprus.
Which brings us back to why it was not Cacoyannis whom I thought of when asked to talk about what makes Cyprus famous.
The Mail’s Preston Wilder noted that Cacoyannis received more recognition abroad than in his native country. Living and working in Athens and Europe, Cacoyannis was an international figure. Interviewed by James Potts in 1978, Cacoyannis was asked if he had a British passport.
“What does it matter? It’s a question of a sense of belonging!” Cacoyannis answered. “It just occurred to me that we might be able to claim you as a British film-maker,” Potts said.
