Zorba 141 minutes to go I really wanted to love this movie, because it's one of my mom's favorites. But the truth is that I couldn't make any emotional connection with it. Young Englishman meets middle age Greek man in his way to Crete, who unabashedly asks him for employment. Englishman (Basil) accepts and takes Zorba as a kind of personal assistant. 15 minutes have passed, and you still have 2 hours and 6 minutes to go!
They meet aging French lady, whom Zorba romances. Next, we are introduced to the beautiful and inaccessible young widow of the town; every man in town desires her but she doesn't like anyone, so the men despise her. Basil has a kind gesture to her. 1 hour and 15 minutes to go
Basil and Zorba get their hands to try to put an old mine property of Basil to work, Zorba gives us a few one liners, calls the French lady a dirty old cow, incites Basil to go and chase the widow and spend less time with books, Zorba goes to town, spends money that it's not his own with a young chick. 45 minutes to go
Basil finally decides to aboard the widow, they spent the night together, young boy in love with her kills himself, town men go mad, they kill the widow while Basil does nothing but to call for Zorba, and Zorba "defends" the widow but leaves her alone amidst all the men
next the French lady dies while the villagers loot her house. Next, the mining project fails, but what the heck, sh%t happens in life, right? Basil and Zorba eat lamb, they know Basil will soon depart, and they dance in a long shot primarily designed to hide the fact that these are doubles who are dancing and not Alan Bates and Anthony Quinn –end of the story- thanks God because it already clocked 141 minutes.
I don't mind to disrespect those who really like the movie and have a deep emotional connection to it. As I mentioned, my own mother belongs to this group, though a suspect her liking of this movie is more related to fond memories of her youth than to actual appreciation of the movie. I love Anthony Quinn as an actor; my favorite movie of all times right now is La Strada. But in this film, I think he was a real ham, especially on the early scenes. And the accent was awful to me; I have to admit I have heard very few Greeks speaking English, but the accent wasn't believable enough for me, it was more Mexican than anything else, and it came and go along the movie. Alan Bates was completely comatose. I mean, his character has spent what should be a passionate night with this gorgeous woman,she is killed, and he has no feelings at all? No sadness? If he does, this actor has nothing to demonstrate it. Lila Kedrova was much better,but after spending a morning hearing a real Frenchwoman navigate through English didn't do much to convince me about Kedrova being a French lady.
I know the Director won an Oscar, and the Academy should know better, but for some reason I didn't like it; it came as pretentious and cheating, but it maybe that I'm just going through a Fellini's period where my standards are too high. I especially detested the scene where Zorba is dancing outside Basil's bungalow. The fast editing shots between legs and torso are nothing to me but a mean to disguise that those weren't Quinn's legs doing the dance. About the script, I beg to differ, but I didn't found anything enlightening about human condition but the sense that man are cruel, very cruel, no matter if they are educated English writers or ignorant Greek adventures; in any case, the life of a woman has zero value and life has to go on eating and dancing and looking for new experiences. But again, it maybe that my expectation was to find something similar to La Strada, where a human being suffering does have an impact on the conscience and emotional life of a brutish man. These were some of the most excruciating 141 of my movie watching experiences, but they were worthy; now I don't have to accept from anybody the argument that this is one of the greatest movies ever made. If you think so, I totally respect you, and more power to you. It just doesn't fit on my "greatest movies list". Maybe I'll give it another try in some twenty years (If God gives me life of course, and if the movie is still preserved in some mean) and I'll see if my opinion changed. Meanwhile, this movie belongs to the category "I'll see it again if you put a gun on my head and force me to".