Stella

Still today, absorbing viewing, this Bazouki melodrama has many of the faults, features and personnel of the Greek home consumption cinema of the fifties but scenes like Alexandrakis' tilted stagger along the white street while his sex-bomb old flame is making out with the football hero or the country picnic with the child dancing along with Vembo's song, generate attention rarely matched there.

The business of Mercouri's first number proving a fiasco creating suspense about whether she actually can deliver is, of course, the device used in 8 MILE.

The film making is a bit rough. This one is not shot by English cameraman Walter Lassally who did most of Cacoyannis' work and some of it looks like it was lit with a searchlight. However the people who will make an impression are already visible - Hadjidakis, Aldredge, Cacoyanis and it's leads, the vibrant Mercouri and virile Foundas who would figure in all the director's early work and should have had as substantial a career as any of them.