Movies filmed on Hydra

Our biennial Hydra meetups, and the big 2002 Event
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tomsakic
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Re: Movies filmed on Hydra

Post by tomsakic »

Jules Dassin, famous film director (most notable works: Du rififi chez les hommes, French crime movie, and classic noir Night and the City) had died yesterday, age 96, in Athens.

I am mentioning this news here as he was Melina Mercouri's husband and the director of films mentioned on this board, Never on Sunday (located in Pirraeus) and Phaedra (filmed on Hydra).

BBC obituary: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7323746.stm
Film director Jules Dassin dies


Mr Dassin's Hollywood career was cut short when he was blacklisted
American film director Jules Dassin has died in an Athens hospital after a short illness, at the age of 96.

Blacklisted in Hollywood after WWII, he went to Europe where he married the late Greek actress and later culture minister Melina Mercouri.

She starred in Mr Dassin's most famous film, Never on Sunday.

After her death in 1994, Mr Dassin fought to realise her main goal: the return of the Parthenon, or Elgin, marbles from Britain to Greece.

A spokesman for Hygeia hospital in Athens said Mr Dassin had been admitted for treatment two weeks ago.

"Greece grieves the loss of a rare human being, an important creator and a true friend," Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis said in a statement.

Oscar nominations

Mr Dassin was born in the US state of Connecticut on 18 December 1911.

He worked as an actor and theatre producer before becoming an assistant to film director Alfred Hitchcock.

He was active in leftist politics and in the early 1950s his promising Hollywood career was cut short when he was named as a communist and blacklisted.


Dassin and Mercouri campaigned for the return of the Elgin marbles

He met Ms Mercouri at the Cannes Film Festival in 1955 where he won the best director prize for his film Rififi. Its long heist sequence, without dialogue, became a template for many later crime capers.

He directed his wife in seven films, including 1960's Never on Sunday in which she played a prostitute with a heart of gold. He received Oscar nominations for best director and screenplay.

Mr Dassin stopped making films in 1980 after Circle of Two starring Richard Burton performed poorly at the box office.

Ms Mercouri was elected to the Greek parliament in 1974 and in 1981 the newly-elected socialist government appointed her culture minister.

After his wife's death he created the Melina Mercouri Foundation to continue her campaign to have the 2,500-year-old marbles that were stripped from the Parthenon returned to Greece.

"He will be remembered for all his good work and struggles with Melina for his campaign for the return of the marbles, which will continue," said socialist opposition leader George Papandreou.
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lizzytysh
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Re: Movies filmed on Hydra

Post by lizzytysh »

Very sad to see how the McCarthyism politics of that time ruined a film career in the U.S. Look at the impact he had regardless. At least he was accepted in Europe; but how sad that he just quit due to one poor, box-office showing. I wish he'd lived to see the return of the marbles and I hope that his and Melina's quest for that will ultimately be successful and that they'll be officially honoured in some way when it happens.


~ Lizzy
"Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken."
~ Oscar Wilde
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Dem
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Re: Movies filmed on Hydra

Post by Dem »

I remember him at the 1993 Film Festival in Thessaloniki
that had a retrospective on his work.

Melina was already very ill
(she passed away a few months later)
but was talking and shining
like a litte girl s once again captivating all the attention.

And Dassin opened a door and entered into the foyer
calm, stoic and silent.

Everyone was focused on Melina almost ignoring Dassin
while HE was the one honored by the Festival.

But he knew well that the Melina that was holding the stage
was his very own creation.

She gave him a country to live and love
and he gave her unconditional love and
world fame.

Image


Dem
Last edited by Dem on Wed Apr 02, 2008 4:26 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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lizzytysh
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Re: Movies filmed on Hydra

Post by lizzytysh »

Thanks for sharing
that poignant anecdote,
Dem.


~ Lizzy
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tomsakic
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Re: Movies filmed on Hydra

Post by tomsakic »

I don't know... if there wasn't McCarthyism, he would never met Melina and make his European movies.

Another expatriot, Joseph Losey, who emigrated to Europe and made modernistic masterpieces with Harold Pinter in UK (Accident, The Servant, and that film we talked much about few years back, The Go-Between), and then in France (Les routes du sud; Mr. Klein) and Italy (Don Giovanni, just released on DVD), said once that he is not sorry, that he's even thankful for being blacklisted, otherwise he would probably be making money in Hollywood, while this way he was making the films as he wanted. "That was the best thing that could happen to me."
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lizzytysh
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Re: Movies filmed on Hydra

Post by lizzytysh »

That's true, Tom. The rainbow and pot of gold.

Still doesn't justify McCarthyism, though.


~ Lizzy
"Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken."
~ Oscar Wilde
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Dem
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Re: Movies filmed on Hydra

Post by Dem »

I think another reason that Dassin didn’t want to talk
about the blacklist was to avoid being defined by it.
He recognized, exile or no, that he did get to make
quite a few movies and that they were damn good.
http://www.criterion.com/blog/


As the ancient Greeks said and the Cohen/Lynch affair attests
"There exists no evil without some good"

Jules Dassin though never forgave Elias Kazan
for his McCarthyism.
"He is a thug with some talent" he used to say
about him.

And even a few years before his death, when Kazan asked
for a meeting to apologize, Dassin staunchly refused.

Dem
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Sophia
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Re: Movies filmed on Hydra

Post by Sophia »

It's rather difficult to describe their magic.

Image
Melina as "Phaedra" on Hydra (directed by Jules Dassin, 1962)

And the song "Agapi mou" by Theodorakis for this film:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1W-RrFIH ... re=related

Sophia
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lizzytysh
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Re: Movies filmed on Hydra

Post by lizzytysh »

Nice photos, Dem and Sophia.

I saw "Phaedra" that many years ago and loved it; ended up naming one of my cats a little over 5 years later after it, except for unknown reasons I spelled her name Phaedre.


~ Lizzy
"Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken."
~ Oscar Wilde
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KerstinP
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Re: Movies filmed on Hydra

Post by KerstinP »

Thanks, Sophia,
It's truly a beautiful song - sounds so sad (although I don't understand the words) and makes me long for Hydra.

As about Dassin and Melina
Real love is what seldom happens - but seems that it happened to them.

Kerstin
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Sophia
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Re: Movies filmed on Hydra

Post by Sophia »

Another movie filmed on Hydra is "Island of Love"(also known as "Not on Your Life") in 1963, directed by Morton DaCosta:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057189/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057189/usercomments

Sophia
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Sophia
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Re: Movies filmed on Hydra

Post by Sophia »

An interesting article about "Fugitive Pieces"(2007), filmed on Hydra (and also Kefallonia, Lesvos and Canada),based on Anne Michaels' novel and directed by Jeremy Podeswa:
Hydra is probably on thousands of lists of “Places to Visit Before You Die.” The 21-square-mile Greek island rises steeply out of the Aegean Sea to a focal point, the 2,000-foot summit of Mount Ere. The principal town, situated on a crescent-shaped cove, is made up of whitewashed houses and tavernas, all topped with terra cotta–tiled roofs. Locals fish for sponges and build boats, minor vestiges of a major maritime trading tradition. In the past 50 years, an artists’ colony has sprung up there, attracting the likes of author Henry Miller (Hydra has “a wild and naked perfection”) and poet-songwriter Leonard Cohen (“the wind brings you the sound...three young men, their arms about each other’s shoulders, singing magnificent close harmony”).

Around 2003, movie and television director Jeremy Podeswa also went there on an artistic pilgrimage, as he puzzled out how to make a film of Anne Michaels’ 1996 book, Fugitive Pieces, some of which is set on Hydra (or Idhra, as it’s also known). “I wanted the place to inspire me,” he says animatedly, “to really understand why she had set [part of] the book there.” Despite a dearth of roads on the remote island, he decided he’d have to shoot there. And when Podeswa wants something badly enough, he’ll do almost anything to get it. Even if it takes years.

And so, for a month in the spring of 2006, an international crew and cast, summoned at great expense, converged on Hydra to shoot a segment of Fugitive Pieces. “The set deck, the props, the lighting, the cameras all had to be carried by hand or donkey all the way up a big hill,” Podeswa recalls. “There were all these donkeys weighed down with the Panavision equipment.” It was an ambitious shoot to be sure, which was in keeping with the overall ambition of the film’s director and the scope of his latest project.
http://www.torontolife.com/features/pro ... /?pageno=1

and:
The film is a joint Canadian/Greek production and was shot in both countries. It sounds like the logistics of production were very complex. Do you have any stories that particularly sum up for you what that was like?

The most dramatic one is that we were shooting on an island in Greece called Hydra, which is an incredibly beautiful island but not really one suitable for filmmaking. There’re no roads, so there’re no cars, no trucks, no vehicles of any kind and because everything is up on hillsides, you can’t even roll things anywhere; you have to climb.

We had Panavision cameras strapped to donkeys, people carrying furniture on their backs and climbing thousands of stairs, and that’s how we made the movie. Because it was so crazy an endeavour, it was also fantastic. It was such a bonding experience for everyone making the movie. We were shooting in a place that hasn’t really been shot before that way. It is singularly beautiful and for the story works incredibly well. Jacob is a writer who goes to Greece to heal, and this is exactly the kind of place that Jacob would go to. He wouldn’t go to a place where there are scooters buzzing around; he would go to a place that is remote and beautiful and quiet and has an unbelievable beauty and that’s what Hydra has.
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2008/04/27/1341025.php

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0765451/

Sophia
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Andrew (Darby)
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Re: Movies filmed on Hydra

Post by Andrew (Darby) »

Sophia wrote:An interesting article about "Fugitive Pieces"(2007), filmed on Hydra (and also Kefallonia, Lesvos and Canada),based on Anne Michaels' novel and directed by Jeremy Podeswa:
...Jacob is a writer who goes to Greece to heal, and this is exactly the kind of place that Jacob would go to. He wouldn’t go to a place where there are scooters buzzing around; he would go to a place that is remote and beautiful and quiet and has an unbelievable beauty and that’s what Hydra has.
Sophia
Indeed, I'm sure all we Hydra appreciators can relate to this sentiment about what's good for Jacob?! :D

Cheers :)
Andrew (Darby)
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I only sing the tunes
The sadness of the seasons
The madness of the moons'
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Sophia
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Re: Movies filmed on Hydra

Post by Sophia »

Ok, June is not so far now ;-)
Have a taste of Hydra in 1956 (from "Girl in Black",directed by Michalis Kakogiannis)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rb2oqFwMatI

Sophia
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