At a Google conference in Rhodes, Matthew d’Ancona finds himself part of a bid to break the world record for Zorba dancing — and to relive one of the greatest scenes in cinema
‘Teach me to dance. Will you?’ Few scenes in cinema have the emotional poignancy and magic of the last moments of Zorba the Greek (1964), as Basil, the young English writer played by Alan Bates, seeks his final lesson in life from Anthony Quinn’s majestic peasant-magus, on the Cretan shore. All around them are broken dreams, and the air hangs heavy with the prospect of their parting: but nothing can repress their joy as that familiar theme, ‘Sirtaki’, by Mikis Theodorakis — slow and stately to begin, but accelerating quickly — transports Zorba and his beloved apprentice to a place of unbreakable friendship.
I can remember vividly when my parents first introduced me to this movie, and the Kazantzakis novel upon which it is based, and I have loved both ever since. Quinn’s Zorba is one of the great, most affecting screen performances, and he delivers the Greek’s famous aphorisms with a perfectly judged mixture of affection and scorn. ‘What kind of a man are you?’ he asks the repressed, bookish Basil as they sail to the island. ‘Don’t you even like dolphins?’
Life, he tells him, ‘is trouble. Only death is not. To be alive is to undo your belt and look for trouble.’ He has ‘enough fight in me to devour the world. So I fight! Well, do we? Or do we let the mountain win?’ Basil, Zorba says, has ‘got everything except one thing: madness. A man needs a little madness or else he never dares cut the rope and be free.’
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