Zorba The Greek

As spritely and exuberant as a tank, but worth a watch. Although Quinn has often played earthy, force-of-nature characters, his title role in ZORBA THE GREEK was a career performance loved by both critics and audiences--so much, in fact, that he's been doing it ever since.

The film opens with Bates, a young English writer, arriving in Greece to collect his thoughts and discover his own identity. When he goes to Crete to work at a lignite mine, an inheritance from his native-Greek father, he is joined by Quinn, a lusty Greek peasant who also wants to work at the mine. The unusual duo move into a hotel run by Kedrova, a tattered French prostitute, former lover to ...