Happy is the man who sails the Aegean

“Happy is the man, I thought, who, before dying, has the good fortune to sail the Aegean Sea.” – Nikos Kazantzakis

A more than sublime five-minute opening scene depicting the serene journey by ferry through the Aegean sea to the island of Hydra. What Rivendell is to the people of Middle-Earth, Hydra is to me - the single most beautiful place I have ever been to and seen in all my life, and everything and more of what I always imagined a Greek island would look and feel like. No cars. No scooters. No roads. No persistent honking and distant sounds of motors running. Still is it a place that to this day remains somewhat untouched by modernism where you really could live here and buy into the illusion that you’re living a simple pre-ww2 life. I was there for two and a half days last year with my parents, and even in that short amount of time, still does it remain the favourite place of mine I visited in all of Greece – one that has left such a profound impact on me since where a day has not gone by where I don’t think of it. The fact that A Girl in Black was shot nearly 70 years ago now, and the look of the main port and the ascending town and the pathways that go around the island look EXACTLY the same now as they did then is a true testament to the timelessness of this stunning place. This could have been filmed today with a black and white filter put over it and you’d be convinced it was filmed in the 50s. This has been one of my most anticipated films to see for a good long while now and it was so much fun watching this with my mum and pointing out all the places we went to and saw. This film is so in love with its location and it really does show off the beauty of the island whenever it gets the chance. The drama between Ellie Lambeti and Dimitris Horn is so simple, yet so alive and invigorating, with both of them playing so naturally together off one another. Seeing them both in the same scene was always a joy.

It continues to irk me just how much the classic cinema of Greece isn’t as restored and made more widely available internationally. It’s such a vital piece of the country’s 20th century history and I wish better efforts were made to get these films out there more. I think because Greece’s cinema fared better domestically rather than internationally that that’s probably a huge reason as to why these films, especially A Girl in Black which is considered an essential of Greece’s cinema, kind of fell under the radar outside of Greece as opposed to what was coming out of Italy and France in the 50s and 60s like La Dolce Vita and Breathless, films that did leave a true indisputable impact internationally. I had to find and buy dodgy and unsanctioned DVD’s on eBay from South Korea for both A Girl in Black and Cacoyannis’ other film, A Matter of Dignity, because they are physically impossible to find a good stream of anywhere online. I can’t say for sure if that’s the same in Greece, but internationally, nada! But in that respect, I suppose the scarcity of A Girl in Black’s availability is what makes this viewing even more profound and special to me and why it really had me in it’s hold. It’s like if all copies of Citizen Kane had suddenly vanished off the face of the Earth the way The Beatles did in the Yesterday movie, and somehow my copy, the only copy, lived to see the light of day. Outside of Angelopoulos’ cinema (simply because of how distant it is to something like A Girl in Black which is more in the key of Italian Neorealism) this is the best film from Greece I’ve seen. Maybe it’s just because of my Hydra bias, but I was so captivated by this, and I’m so happy to say I’ve finally seen it.