The magnificent creation of Mikis Theodorakis was extended to the cinema. His music has «dressed» many Greek and foreign films. Zorba's slide in Michael Cacoyannis’ film of the same name (1964) may not have won him an Oscar, but it stirred up crowds from all over the world. The song ’If You Remember My Dream« in the film ’Honeymoon» (1959), which was also sung by the Beatles, his composition for Sidney Liumet's Serpico (1973), the soundtrack for Kostas Gavras« »State of Siege« (1972), were films that gave the great composer many international nominations in the music category. In 1970, for his music in »Z«, he was awarded the BAFTA prize for original music, with Miki then exiled to Zatuna.
The film «Z» (Zei) by Kostas Gavras was based on the book of the same name by Vassilis Vassilikos on the murder of the MP of EDA Gregory Lambrakis.
The writer Vassilis Vassilikos will tell the Athenian-Macedonian News Agency about Mikis Theodorakis: «Mikis the one and only. Miki is a musician, a composer of music, a songwriter, of art music, but also of the opera, a multi-talented composer, Romanos the Melodist, what else remains? All ranges of music in his quiver. This is the Mikis who has now shocked us with his demise. But this is not death. It is life that continues its journey to the Beyond. And he bids us farewell with Lorenz Mavilis's “Lethe”: “Happy are the dead who forget the bitterness of life.../ And if they drink cloudy water they remember again,/ Passing through incense of asphodel,/ Old pains that sleep in them; / Ah, you cannot but weep for the coward, / Let your eyes mourn the living / They want to, but they cannot forget”.
It was in 1963, immediately after the assassination of Grigoris Lambrakis, that Mikis Theodorakis began his political career as president of the newly founded Lambrakis Youth and in 1964 as a member of the EDA.
«We could have no other music than that of Mikis Theodorakis», Kostas Gavras recounts in his autobiography. «During the editing process I had done a lot of rehearsals, and this one fitted harmoniously with the shots, giving them a touch of emotion. But Mikis was exiled by the colonels to a village in the Peloponnese,Zatouna, and I needed his consent [ ...] The road to Zatouna was forbidden to foreigners. This time, a second attempt by Jacques Perrin. Always without success. And then, we receive a packet of cigarettes on which Miki has written permission to use his music.’.
The soundtrack of the film has excerpts from «Laughing Child», «The Boy Has a Heart», «In this Neighbourhood’ and other iconic songs by Mikis Theodorakis, which K. Gavras and a French composer recorded the selected songs and adapted them to the duration of the respective scenes.
Natassa Domnaki
photo by ARCHIVE OF CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL HISTORY: Members of the Lambrakis Democratic Youth form the “Z” on the beach. The photo was published in the newspaper Eph. «Our Generation» on 10/12/1966.
