Michael Cacoyannis

Cacoyannis was born on 11 June 1922 in Limassol, Cyprus, then a British colony. His father, Panayotis Cacoyannis, was a prominent lawyer who was later knighted by the British. The family sent the boy to London to study law, and he was called to the bar, but the Second World War changed his plans: he worked for the Greek service of the BBC, then studied acting at the Old Vic school and spent several years on the London stage under the name Michael Yannis. He never practised law.

In 1953 he moved to Athens, a city he barely knew, to make films. His first, Κυριακάτικο ξύπνημα (Windfall in Athens, 1954), was a modest comedy; his second, Στέλλα (1955), made a star of Melina Mercouri and took him to Cannes. For the next decade he alternated Greek films with international ones, and Zorba the Greek (1964), shot on Crete with Anthony Quinn, made him famous worldwide. During the military dictatorship of 1967–74 he lived abroad and filmed The Trojan Women in Spain; after the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974 he made the documentary Αττίλας '74.

From the 1980s he worked mostly in the theatre and opera, directing Greek tragedy at Epidaurus and abroad, and he made his last film, an adaptation of Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, in 1999. In 2010 he opened the Michael Cacoyannis Foundation, an arts centre in Athens. He died in Athens on 25 July 2011, aged eighty-nine.

Cacoyannis's Greek films of the 1950s are small, sharp dramas of ordinary people. Στέλλα (1955), with music by Manos Hadjidakis, is the story of a tavern singer who refuses to marry the man who loves her and is killed for it; Melina Mercouri's performance and the song «Αγάπη που 'γινες δίκοπο μαχαίρι» (Love, you became a two-edged knife) made it a classic. Το κορίτσι με τα μαύρα (A Girl in Black, 1956), with Ellie Lambeti, is set on Hydra, and Το τελευταίο ψέμα (A Matter of Dignity, 1958) in an Athenian family facing ruin. Ηλέκτρα (1962), with Irene Papas, began his trilogy of Euripides on film, shot in real landscapes with the chorus as village women; it was followed by Οι Τρωάδες (The Trojan Women, 1971), with Katharine Hepburn and Vanessa Redgrave, made as a statement against war, and Ιφιγένεια (1977), with Papas as Clytemnestra. Both Electra and Iphigenia were nominated for the Oscar for best foreign-language film.

Zorba the Greek (Αλέξης Ζορμπάς, 1964), from Nikos Kazantzakis's novel, is the film that outgrew him. Anthony Quinn's Zorba teaches a shy English writer how to live, Lila Kedrova's ageing French courtesan dies in a village that waits to loot her house, and Mikis Theodorakis's score, with the sirtaki that Quinn dances on the beach at the end, became the sound of Greece abroad. It earned seven Oscar nominations, including best director and best picture for Cacoyannis, and won three, for Kedrova, for Walter Lassally's photography and for the art direction. He wrote his own screenplays and edited his own films, and his style is spare: faces, stone, light, and actors allowed to be silent.

The dance Zorba does on the beach, the sirtaki, did not exist before 1964; it was put together for the film, and it is now danced at weddings and taught to tourists as if it were ancient. Theodorakis's «Zorba's Dance» is still the first Greek tune most foreigners recognise. Stella's song «Αγάπη που 'γινες δίκοπο μαχαίρι» is sung in every Greek tavern, and Στέλλα is routinely named among the best Greek films ever made. The Michael Cacoyannis Foundation (Ίδρυμα Μιχάλης Κακογιάννης) on Pireos Street in Athens is a working theatre, cinema and concert hall, and holds his archive. His Euripides films are shown in Greek schools alongside the plays. A learner can watch Στέλλα or Ιφιγένεια with Greek subtitles, or simply listen to the Zorba theme and try, like everyone else, to dance it.

• He qualified as a barrister in London and never practised; on the London stage he acted under the name Michael Yannis.
• The sirtaki was invented for Zorba the Greek, partly because Anthony Quinn had hurt his foot and could not manage the quick steps of the traditional dances.
• He filmed three Euripides tragedies with Irene Papas, in 1962, 1971 and 1977, in Greek, English and Greek again.
• In 1983 he directed the Broadway revival of the musical Zorba, with Anthony Quinn once more in the title role.