Kostas Diplaros

Kostas Diplaros

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The Roundup 1965 (6.6)

One of filmmaker and expatriate writer Adonis Kyrou's best-known quotes translates roughly as "I urge you: Learn to look at 'bad' films, they are so often sublime." The same could be said of Kyrou's own directorial work in Greece before the advent of the 1967 dictatorship forced him to flee to Paris. This confused mess, the first cinematic attempt at portraying the Greek resistance in WWII, caused quite a stink upon release, as much for its surprising style (recalling that of Bertolt Brecht) as for its subject matter. Reaction to its screening as part of the 1966 Cannes Film Festival's International Critic's Week was heated and divisive, proving Kyrou's later statement by rising above its own inherent silliness to achieve a sort of rarefied critical status. It's bad drama that nonetheless succeeds by dint of audacity more than quality (a comment which could apply equally to the work of many exploitation directors like Jean Rollin whom Kyrou later so lovingly profiled).
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There Are No Deserters 1970

August 1944, and a captain in the Greek army in the Middle East, Jason, secretly disembarks on an island with the mission of gathering information on the state of the German defensive positions, in view of the imminent landing of the Allied Forces. To complete his mission, he makes contact with some rebels, but the Germans are aware of his presence and arrest twelve men to force him to surrender. Shortly before the deadline expires, a local man who had been declared a deserter shortly before the war began and had been in hiding, presents himself at his post and is executed, making his wife and son proud.