Zorba the Greek resembles the Cretan landscape which it portrays so magnificently. Its themes are as ancient and clean-cut and harsh as the rocks. For this is a film about the struggle to live--to survive physically, to force nature to yield a living, and to continue to be glad you are alive. And it is about a community, its harsh and timeless rites, its reaction to outsiders.

The earthy, powerful Zorba is growing old--and growing aware of it--when he encounters an intellectual young Englishman. Together they go to Crete. Or more accurately, Zorba invites himself with his usual impulsiveness and the Englishman accepts with an impulsiveness which is most unusual for him. Zorba meets an aging French courtesan, an outcast in the Cretan community, and makes her feel young again and watches her die. Meanwhile the Englishman meets a young widow, as beautiful and bitter as the ancient Greek heroines. He makes love to her. A young boy who loved her in vain drowns himself. And then the Englishman watches the community stone the young woman he has loved, and kill her.

But behind this plot, with its obvious parallels and clear-cut themes, are emotions as subtle and changing as the ocean which Zorba and the Englishman live near. This curious combination of the most obvious and most suggestive is typical of Kazantzakis's writing. In adapting the novel and directing the film, Michael Cacoyannis has captured much of the combination.

But a good deal of the credit for this must, of course, go to the actors. Anthony Quinn--well, sooner or later he had to play a grizzled Greek. He's always looked like Zorba the Greek should look. In this film, he is so hearty that all the dour faces in a waiting room break into responsive chuckles when he laughs; so tender that he can console the courtesan for the loss of her lovers, the English, French, Italian, and Russian generals; so defiant that after a mine he has attempted to open collapses, he shakes his fist at the obstinate mountain and vows to conquer it. And his delivery of the movie's unforgettable line is perfect. Earnest yet energetic, he says to the young Englishman beside him, "Boss, you've got everything--looks, brains.... But you need a little madness!"

The two women are portrayed with equal skill. Lila Kedrova plays the old courtesan. Draped in bitten furs and clutching a parasol, she is grotesque, pitiful--and yet you can believe that once she was beautiful enough to charm all those admirals. Irene Pappas plays the young widow with the same pride and dignity she brought to her performance as Electra.

And then, unfortunately, there's Alan Bates. Zorba the Greek is a superb film anyway. But anyone who has read the book would join me in adding the "anyway." For in the novel, the Englishman whom Bates portrays is a complex character, whom the reader respects as much as he loves Zorba. Zorba may embody life, but Zorba's boss hardly embodies lifelessness.

In the film, on the other hand, he is a milquetoast. He looks like a model from some fashion magazine--just as depressingly lifeless, unreal, and unlikeable. He is no more than a simple foil for Zorba. The film implies, apparently unintentionally, that this effeminate character is homosexual. Although the suggestion is later contradicted, it is unmistakable and confusing.

The performance of one further character is a tribute to Kazantzakis's genius for detail--and to Cacoyannis's skills in capturing the spirit of the novel. The old French-woman's' parrot squawks the name of one of the admirals with the same lusty spirit that enlivens the whole film.

While even skillful cameramen cannot transform Bates's boringly vacant expressions, elsewhere the photography is superb. It captures the harshness of the landscape and the flowers which spring up at Easter time. And it focuses on the expressions of the people of Crete (thus listed in the credits!).

The book ends as the Englishman learns of Zorba's death. In the film both of them rediscover life. Their mine has failed, and their projects for hauling down wood ended in disaster. The women they have made love to are dead. The two men join hands and dance by the sea.